We are especially proud of our third book, Ethel Rohan’s gorgeous, personal, at times painful but always resonant, Hard to Say, and this is a book you’re going to want to get your hands on before it sells out. Hard to Say is on sale now, in production, and ships toward the end of the month. Don’t just take our word though, read further to see what Robin Black, Amelia Gray, Eugene Cross, Ben Loory, xTx, and Matthew Salesses have to say about this fine, fine book.
–Robin Black, author of If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This
Like the whispered secrets and silent prayers that play throughout, a rising and relentless tension builds. Rohan’s strong, precise prose shines across this collection of lost innocents like a comet made of cut glass.
–Amelia Gray, author of Threats
Ethel Rohan’s Hard To Say is simply magnificent. How else to describe these stories where characters, always on the verge of opening their hearts to the world, turn from the chance again and again? The urgency in these stories is so palpable, the tension between mother and daughter so well rendered, I found myself pacing as I read, unable to keep still. Standing on the opposite side of the room, an ache opening somewhere within, there was no need to ask how I’d gotten there. The answer was in my hands.
–Eugene Cross, author of Fires of Our Choosing
Ethel Rohan’s stories are small, but they feel vast and bold. And she leads you through them desperately, like a ghost through the ruins of the world.
–Ben Loory, author of Stories for Nighttime and Some For the Day
Hard to say, but Ethel Rohan does in tremendous words that hold up a mirror to the struggles of a family, a little girl, a young woman, a mother, a life. The stories in this collection read like crossing a river by way of rocks; unsteady, precarious, exhilarating and scary. Â But Ethel takes our hand and guides us, showing us a fragile beauty just under the surface.
–xTx, author of Normally Special
An Irish daughter struggles with her relationship with her mother, who drinks, beats, goes blind, loses her sanity. The stories in this aptly titled book are relentless, full of terror, frighteningly true. Ethel Rohan’s rhythms will get inside you.
–Matthew Salesses, author of Our Island of Epidemics