The Diviner and Other Stories Author:Brian Friel 5 cassettes, 6.25hours — Brian Friel is recognized as Ireland's greatest living playwright, creator of such national classics as "Aristocrats" and "Translations." He has written two short story collections and 15 plays. One of these 15 was the 1992 Tony Award-winner "Dancing at Lugnahasa," which ran for a year and a half on Broadway and has playe... more »d in theaters all over the country. "The Diviner and Other Tales" is a distillation of the best from Friel's two collections, and focuses on the lives of villagers from rural County Donegal in Northern Ireland. Donegal, famous for its unspoiled beauty, seems an especially appropriate setting for Friel's stories, in which the seemingly mundane takes on momentous, occasionally magical qualities.
Mixing small town eccentrics and mystics with universal issues of love and rebellion, Friel's stories, in possess a special Celtic blend of humor and pathos. One of the wriest stories in the collection - "The Widowhood System" - is the tale of a quirky middle-aged bachelor who devises a very ingenious, not entirely fail-safe and positively puerile way to get his prize pigeon to fly the coop.« less