Is Nicole Flattery The New Lorrie Moore?

Is Nicole Flattery the new Lorrie Moore? I t’s been a year since Nicole Flattery’s debut collection of short stories, Show Them A Good Time, was reviewed in this magazine. This review was one of the few that didn’t compare Flattery to Lorrie Moore and, indeed, “the next Lorrie Moore” or “90s Moore” look set to become the tags by which her style is referred to – even if, as a young female graduate of English Studies at Trinity, her subject matter will inevitably be compared to Sally Rooney’s. The epigraph for Flattery’s debut is from Moore’s story “Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens”.

Comparisons to Moore, along with the detail from Alice Maher’s Yggdrasil on Fergal Condon’s brilliant yellow cover design for Flattery’s book, indicate that this promising young writer has been given our collective blessing to take up the mantle of the next female virtuoso – a much beloved artistic talent whose work is not only technically accomplished but really engages its audience.

Faber & Faber published Moore’s Collected Stories in 2009, a collection that begins with four new stories – which were later included in Bark (2014) – before diving into her back catalogue. The technical accomplishment of these newer stories is a propitious step forward in Moore’s writing, and offers a tantalising glimpse into what Flattery’s obvious talent might develop into.

Both writers are frequently praised for their humour. But while Flattery and “90s Moore” derive most of their comedy from details that are either incidental to or don’t quite fit into the dramatic framework of their stories, 21st Century Moore, particularly in “Debarking”, allows the eccentricity of fully developed external characters to bring comedy into the fold of the story’s dramatic arc. Incidentally, Moore’s comedy is real comedy – laugh out loud – not just the half-funny stuff we pretend is good enough because it appears in a work of literary fiction.

I don’t find Flattery as funny as Moore, in fact I don’t think she’s trying to be. At the same time, the attention Flattery pays to the trickiness of narration is, for me, the most striking and exciting aspect of her work, and not something I notice Moore engaging with much. Flattery opens up fascinating gaps between a close third person narrator and the psychology of the character they’re supposed to be telling us about. Where Moore’s characters negotiate professional, familial, and romantic relationships, Flattery’s protagonists dominate their stories almost to the exclusion of everyone else. “Abortion, A Love Story” is her only story with more than one character who’s more than a shade, and I think it’s her best (it’s also by far the longest, which bodes well for Flattery’s upcoming novel).

When reviewing books, we tend to compare younger writers to older ones because that’s the only thing that means anything, really. Adjectives are too subjective – what’s “enthralling” to me might not be to you, and whether something is “provocative” is largely a matter of taste. Properly engaging with a writer’s work is tantamount to a good review. Book reviews also serve, however, to tell us whether we might be interested in buying the book; to this end, saying something like “Nicole Flattery is the next Lorrie Moore” or “Claire Keegan is the spiritual successor to John McGahern” is of much more use, despite the inevitable inaccuracies.

Moore might be the best short story writer working in the US today; Flattery is a talented, exciting Irish prospect. You should be reading them both.

WORDS BY FIACHRA KELLEHER