This is the writer's voice, new fiction from the New Yorker. I'm Deborah

Treisman fiction at the New Yorker. On this episode of the writer's voice, we'll hear Kevin Barry read his story Finestaire

from the April 15, 2024 issue of the magazine.

Barry is the author of six books of fiction, the novel City of Bohein for which he won

the International Dublin Literary Award and the story collection That Old Country Music, which came out in

2020.

A new novel, The Heart and Winter Winter will be published in July.

Now here's Kevin Barry. Fennie stare.

The big man was in a condition of thrilling remorse.

He was broken-herted again at 55 and loving it. He leaned against the rail on the top deck of the

Cork Roscoe Ferry and shook woefully from side to side, his heavy

handsome ginger head and the cries of a seal pop rose softly from the hollows of his chest.

Sylvia had been abandoned that morning in County Claire and would get over him

before the leaves were off the trees.

Kean, John, Wynne, would never get over himself.

He raised his head and wiped away the tears and watched Ireland recede into the afternoon haze,

and he prayed that it would stay there. He knew it would be a long time before he went home again.

It was early September in a fine spell.

The day was calm and the Celtic sea ran smoothly on streaks of white-gray luster.

He walked the deck in a bliss of painful nostalgia.

The ferry felt as if it had sailed directly from the 1980s.

There was the same old idiot noise of the arcade games from below, and Dexy's midnight runners still played on the

...