Local author Dr Joe Ducke completed his collection of short stories in late 2008. Although Dr Ducke sadly passed away on January 3 this year, the official launch of his work, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies, is to go ahead next Sunday, February 1 in the Shamrock Lodge Hotel.
The book will be launched by singer/ songwriter John Spillane, who will also perform some of his own music on the night.
Also on hand to perform after the launch are Athlone band and Passionfruit Theatre regulars, Alan O’Neill, Michael Byrne, Neil Fitzgibbon, and Bean Dolan playing as Hickory Wind.
Joe Ducke eternally branded the arts scene in Athlone with the establishment of the Passionfruit Theatre, which continues to go from strength to strength.
He completed another addition to Athlone’s strong literary heritage with this collection of short stories entitled Tell Me Sweet Little Lies. Joe had also found literary success on the stage, penning several critically acclaimed plays including Stardust, Fair Exchange, and The Sea, two of which were broadcast on RTE radio. He also had a successful children’s book published in the early 90s, entitled Snaps Kelly and the Paper Monsters.
This new collection of short stories centres on the unpredictability of the deviant narrators who litter the pages of this book. The vividly crafted stories are tied together with the Oscar Wilde quote: “Your lips are too straight, the lips of someone who has never lied. I must teach you to lie, so your lips will be beautiful like those of an antique mask”.
The collection consists of 14 stories, with a great range of characters varying from the love-stricken country scholar duped by a female pretender during his first term in university, to the underhanded dealings of a traveller family in times of hardship. These ‘wonderful liars’ provide the basis for some powerful, witty, and at times moving tales of Irish life, reminiscent of the master of the short story, Mitchelstown’s William Trevor.
Like Trevor’s, Ducke’s stories are powerfully Irish, grounded in the heritage of the Midlands. The characters create a world of fiction in which they alone can live, sucking the reader into a world of elaborate pretence. Each story twists and turns, leaving the reader unsure of the various narrators’ intentions until the final line of the story. The book’s intentions can be summed up with a line typical of the work of Joe Ducke: “It’s funny how, when you’re stuck for words, lies keep coming to the rescue.” The characters in this collection of exquisite short stories need to lie as their lives become fiction.
All proceeds from the book go to Passionfruit Theatre. The launch of Tell Me Sweet Little Lies takes place in the Shamrock Lodge Hotel on Sunday February 1 at 8pm. All are welcome.
