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Updated / Friday, 5 Mar 2021
15:17
We're delighted to present an extract from
Pure Gold, the debut collection of short stories by John Patrick McHugh, published by New Island.
Set on an imagined island off the west coast of Ireland, John Patrick McHugh's debut collection of stories conjures a complete and varied cast of characters – some lost, some lonely, many dreaming and others self-deceiving - casting a bold eye on masculinity, family and class, friendships and betrayal, and embedding us in the moments on which a life can twist and turn.
Bonfire
That summer we lit fires. Terry and I.
We'd meet in the mornings, when oats still gummed my molars and the sky was beginning to shake itself blue. Two of us dressed in thready-sleeved jerseys; two of us decorated with scabs and cuts and small, sloughing burnholes. When we had money, we chucked it together and bought matches from Brett’s Newsagent. And when we had no spare coppers – the more likely – we snatched clickety lighters from the dashboard of Terry’s dad’s van or bummed fizzing matches from the backyard smokers of The Clinic. Then, bodies gunned over the handlebars of our bikes, we’d thunder on in pursuit of fires, the Island quaking from our shouts. Time had no use to us. Days never had acts, never dulled to a yawn, never became sticky; rather they were endless, borderless, buzzing alive until we were confronted by the full stop of night.