I Hear You by Paul McVeigh
Image description/alt text: the story's cover, features a pair of legs under a tall stack of boom boxes and tape players, almost as if it is all one coherent being or the person carrying them is obscured by them.
I Hear You by Paul McVeigh is a short story collection which will be published on 3rd March 2025 by Salt Publishing.
I was drawn to this book by not only the cover, but McVeigh's other book The Good Son is one that I have been wanting to read for some time. As a queer writer of Irish descent myself, I'm always looking at the best and newest voices in the field, and McVeigh's is a name that keeps coming up, for good reason. And given Salt’s track record with writers like A.J. Ashworth (one of my favourite short story writers), I knew that the quality of writing would be only the absolute best.
Split into two sections, the collection starts with three standalone stories, followed by a set of interconnected stories collectively titled The Circus.
The stories featured in I Hear You were originally written for radio, and you can feel this from the opening of Tickles, the very first story featured. This does nothing to dampen the quality of the prose, but you can definitely see how the pieces would be enhanced by the spoken aspect.
By turns tender, raw and unflinching, I Hear You shows McVeigh as a modern great in writing the small, human moments that make up the big events that change lives. I don't remember the last time a story made me feel anything quite as viscerally as the second story, Cuckoo, a standout for me.
Maybe I'm biased, being queer myself, but another standout for me is Daddy Christmas, a poignant and all-too-relatable take on change and regret in the face of gay singledom. Even though I can't say I personally have ever wanted children, this story spoke to me (spoke for me almost) in ways I can't even begin to coherently express.
The Circus features ten short pieces focussing on different people associated with a new club in Belfast hosting a Got Talent competition, thus all the stories take the role of the central character as their title (The Glamourous Assistant - a personal favourite, The Comedian, The Judge and The Organiser, for example) and this is an approach I really enjoyed.
I could talk for hours about each story individually because they have all left some kind of mark on me that I am yet to fully be able to articulate. Each story deals with the protagonist being overshadowed and/or alienated by someone/thing close to them in some way, and McVeigh is brilliant at this, there are thirteen stories in this collection and they all explore a different form of weighty expectation brought on by existing alongside another person who is deemed ‘better’ and I have to say I am in awe of his ability to do this.
It’s safe to say that I practically devoured this book, mostly just taking breaks between stories to let the weight of them sink in.
Few writers could so expertly write endearing characters and bigoted, irredeemable ones, too. The Medium is a timely exploration of religion, celebrity, consumer culture and the internet from the perspective of someone charging people subscription fees to talk to God and get a mortgage in heaven.
A master of realistic, distinctive voices, McVeigh's I Hear You is a timely, queer collection with drag queens, musicality and pop culture references ranging from Ariana Grande to The Scarlet Pimpernel (how much camper can you get?)
Seriously, what more could you ask for?
Image description/alt text: the story's cover, features a pair of legs under a tall stack of boom boxes and tape players, almost as if it is all one coherent being or the person carrying them is obscured by them.
