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Chapter 15 - Consoling Machines in Contemporary Irish Fiction

from Part IV - The Digital

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2023

Margaret Kelleher
Affiliation:
University College Dublin
James O'Sullivan
Affiliation:
University College Cork
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Summary

This chapter draws on a series of contemporary Irish novels, charting the way everyday ‘technological objects’ – phones, laptops, computers – do more than simply sit alongside fictional characters. When we see ‘Connell’s face illuminated by the lit display’ of a phone in Sally Rooney’s Normal People (2018), we see a moment of intimacy between the characters. When Sinéad Hynes is shown ‘Googling [in bed]’ in Elaine Feeney’s As You Were (2020), we learn much about the character’s desire for privacy, her realism, her sense of humour. As the boy in Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing (2013) hammers the controls of a computer game, or Anne Enright’s Gina in The Forgotten Waltz manages her extramarital affair on her smartphone, we see them finding refuge, expression, and intimacy in the company of their endlessly understanding machines. These are the machines that support their users, distract them, comfort them. The console consoles.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Atkins, Barry, More than a Game: The Computer Game as Fictional Form (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Kent, Steven L., The Ultimate History of Videogames: From Pong to Pokemon and Beyond – The Story Behind the Craze that Touched Our Lives and Changed the World (Louisiana, LA: Prima Publishing, 2001).Google Scholar
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McBride, Eimear, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing (London: Faber & Faber, 2014).Google Scholar
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Rooney, Sally, Normal People (London: Faber & Faber, 2018).Google Scholar
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Wood, James, ‘Useless Prayers: Eimear McBride’s “A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing”’, The New Yorker, 29 September 2014.Google Scholar

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