I couldn’t be happier to say that the first birthday of The Accidental Wife has brought a flurry of excitement, one of the biggest being a wonderful review by multi-award-winning author Alex Reece Abbott on the prestigious The Short Story Review website.
It’s such a joy when a reader really “gets” your work, and Reece Abbott really gets mine!
McAlinden conjures up an entertaining, vivid, intergenerational cast of (sometimes recurring) feisty characters, warts and all. Consistently engaging, the stories range from two to twelve pages, and span class, religion, gender, race, culture, sexuality and age – there are no taboos or polemic here. Meet addicts, bigots, plotters and schemers, thieves and hypocrites, adulterers and dreamers – ordinary people getting on with their lives, in a complex, extraordinary setting.
Read the whole review here
Read one of Alex Reece Abbott’s beautiful flash fictions here
Pass the champagne
Orla McAlinden. 
Congratulations, Orla. I am as delighted with the review as I was with the book. Keep up the good work and remember me to Des Kenny when you are next in Galway. His recent box of books, about the famine, is exhausting me, but in a good cause! I shall be in Armagh tomorrow at the John Hewitt and will think of you.
All the best for your current work and well done for getting the attic clear!
Dear Orla: Thanks for sharing this incredible review. It’s a joy to watch you and your first literary child blossom. I hope to see your next baby soon. Cheryl Romo, California