Blánaid McKinney¿s long story, ¿The Outfielder, the Indian Giver¿, appeared in 1998¿s Phoenix Irish Short Stories. As one Irish reviewer commented, ¿If the sign of a good story is its ability to burn itself into the reader¿s imagination, McKinney¿s work certainly ranks among the best short fiction to appear, anywhere, in the past year or so¿. The most talented of the new writers to have appeared in the Phoenix series, the jewel-like precision of her writing allied to the ability to convey place and character with a vivid intensity suggest that she will quickly assert a position among the new wave of Irish writers.
Eleven powerful stories insinuate themselves into the imagination. In ¿Transmission¿, a beautiful young man systematically trashes the car that killed his lover ¿ the sense of shimmering metallic heat and the young man¿s calm violence are remarkably conveyed. In ¿Sub-Aqua¿, a middle-aged woman discovers a kind of freedom from the tragedy of her mute husband, a former tube-train driver silenced by the horror of a ¿leaper¿ under his train. Language and communication, or the lack of it, is the underlying theme of many of the stories, nowhere more powerfully expressed than in the story ¿Big Mouth¿, in which an IRA informer ¿ fatally incapable of keeping his mouth shut - suffers the ultimate penalty. When his former comrades catch up with him he cannot understand the Irish words they use, but understands too well the Latin, ¿Ultio¿: ¿Revenge¿.