"I Hear You" is a collection of short stories by Paul McVeigh, created for BBC Radio 4. All the stories are set in Northern Ireland, a place with a complex sociopolitical history. They explore themes such as family life, community, interpersonal relationships, and personal growth into adulthood.

The first few stories are quite tender and introspective, which fans of Sarah Winman's "Tin Man" would likely appreciate. The latter part of the book consists of interconnected stories that highlight the evolving attitudes and atmosphere in modern-day Belfast. These tales are humorous and entertaining, showcasing the author's versatility.

I thoroughly enjoyed this compilation and would love to experience it performed. I highly recommend this collection to readers. Thank you to Salt Publishing and NetGalley for the advanced copy; it was a delightful read.

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.

Paul McVeigh’s I Hear You comprises three standalone stories plus The Circus, a suite of ten pieces all featuring participants in the talent show put on by the titular club’s new owner. The £10,000 prize has focused the minds of all manner of performers – from the impressionist who’s incapable of being himself to the magician’s assistant who sees a chance for revenge on her coercive partner to the medium convinced he has a direct line to God, and happy to charge believers £99 to access it. James, the organiser, reveals the story behind the contest in the last piece neatly wrapping up the series.
All the stories in this collection were commissioned by the BBC, each of them slipping neatly into a fifteen-minute radio slot, imposing a strict discipline on McVeigh’s writing. There’s no room for fancy literary footwork but he conveys a great deal in these brief pieces exploring themes of family in the first three standalones while painting a picture of Belfast in The Circus, what’s changed and what hasn’t since the Troubles. The club sits in an area close to the Ardoyne, where McVeigh grew up, a sectarian flashpoint where division is still evident as Protestant Tony, aka Dockland Dolores, makes clear in his story of his friendship with Catholic James. There’s a pleasing immediacy about McVeigh’s writing which often has a thread of humour running through it. I'm certainly keen to explore more of his work.

A great collection of short stories featuring interconnecting characters from the same area in Belfast
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC.

Only Paul McVeigh could create the range of emotional reaction in such a short time. I found myself chuckling at the recognisable relationship challenges even as my heart was pulled at the heartbreaking small tragedies. Each story became a new favourite as I read - now I need to read them all again to decide. A masterful example of perfect short story writing.

When it comes to episodic radio dramas, BBC Northern Ireland have been producing some really interesting stuff of late. If you’ve listened to series like ‘The Last Resort’ or ‘Bright Lights, Dead City’ (written, respectively, by Jan Carson and Séamas O’Reilly), you’ll already know there’s something about the quality of the writing, acting and overall production which guarantees a few hours of highly enjoyable radio.

‘The Circus’, written by Paul McVeigh (whose novel ‘The Good Son’ I liked very much years ago), was one such radio drama, comprised of ten episodes originally broadcast in 2023 and now published in book form as part of this volume, which also includes three stand-alone short stories. The ten interlinked stories are entertaining and very readable, contain some funny moments and interesting observations, have a nice sense of place, and offer a valuable insight into modern Northern Irish society. That said, while the length and tone might work perfectly for radio (as the author himself comments in the introduction, ‘the story slot is fourteen minutes, and that translates to, roughly, 2,000 words on the page’ plus the time when they air - 3.45pm - is also ‘to be considered in the story theme and language used’), I felt that as short stories on the page they didn't quite land to the same extent. There was some emotional depth missing, the characters didn’t have the required space to come fully alive and the individual pieces didn’t entirely pack a punch in the way the very best short stories often can do.

Having subsequently listened to ‘The Circus’ on BBC Sounds, I do think it is a very fine piece of radio drama, but, even if I can’t precisely put my finger on what it is that didn’t wholly work for me on the page, I felt that they weren’t quite as good when consumed as short stories. I realise this is entirely subjective and the fact that I personally look for rather different things when listening to a radio piece as opposed to when reading a book might well not prove to be the case for other readers!

The decision to publish ‘The Circus’ together with the three additional short stories (‘Tickles’, ‘Cuckoo’ and ‘Daddy Christmas’) is an interesting one. I think the book could have benefited from including more of these ‘other stories’, in order to provide a better balance between ‘The Circus’ and ‘the rest’. There is also something of a further imbalance in that these three stand-alone stories at the start are much more powerful than the ten from 'The Circus' which follow. I found McVeigh’s sensitive and perceptive descriptions of family dynamics and relationships in these first three deeply moving, plus he does some interesting things with language that also takes them up a notch from a formal point of view. A whole collection of stories along of the lines of these three would have definitely got 5 stars from me!

With thanks to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

Following his critically acclaimed debut novel The Good Son, Paul McVeigh returns with a volume of short stories published as part of the Salt Modern Stories series. The title of the collection – I Hear You – is a reference to the fact that these works were written and commissioned for BBC Radio 4. In his introduction to the volume, McVeigh explains the challenges of writing for this medium – the stories had to be of a specific length reflecting the duration of each broadcast (roughly 2000 words) and needed to cater for a pre-watershed audience. A less talented writer would have considered these requirements limiting. In McVeigh’s hands, however, they become prompts for punchy stories in which the characters are laid bare through their respective narrative voices.

The central piece in this volume is The Circus, a sequence of ten stories set in the vicinity of Cliftonville Circus, North Belfast, each of which focuses on a would-be participant in a local talent show. The stories are connected through ingenious cross-references, leading to a final story which ties up all loose ends. Against this greater narrative, the insights into the variegated cast of characters also reveal a changing community, still haunted by the Troubles, coming to terms with contemporary, diverse, multi-cultural society.

Of the remaining stories which complete the collection, two are particularly poignant (“Tickles”, about a man and his mother who suffers from dementia, and “Daddy Christmas”, in which a gay man writes a letter to an imaginary son), while the third, “Cuckoo”, has a surreal vibe.

This is a slim but compelling collection of well-crafted stories which should ideally be read aloud… or listened to!

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2025/02/i-hear-you-by-paul-mcveigh.html