The Mad Lomansneys by Frank O'Connor

Connemara Landscape by John Skelton

The year is almost over and I have  fallen behind on the Deal Me In Challenge (no surprise there). That being said, I somehow managed to read and review more short stories in 2025 than in any other year of my life, so I’m calling that a win. Still, it would be nice to actually finish all 52 stories within the allotted time frame at least once. Here’s hoping I can stay the course with the last handful on the list.

My latest draw was the Queen of Diamonds, which landed me with The Mad Lomasneys by Frank O’Connor. I wish I had more glowing things to say, but this one was disappointing and just dragged for me. The whole boy meets girl plot ("will they or won’t they?”) become tiresome pretty quickly and by the end I felt more impatient than emotionally invested. Sure, the romantic misadventures of Rita Lomasney and Ned Lowry touch on some big themes like gender roles, female autonomy, Catholic guilt and family expectations. Unfortunately, the melodrama overshadowed the nuance for me.

The characters are so exaggerated they start to feel like caricatures rather than people you might actually meet in an Irish village. And maybe it’s unfair, but when I think of early-20th-century Irish realism, I can’t help comparing O’Connor to James Joyce. Both were writing about the same cultural moment: tight-knit communities, Catholic moral codes, the quiet tensions simmering beneath everyday life. But Joyce tends to capture those dynamics with a sharper, more restrained touch. In Dubliners, his characters feel painfully and beautifully real: flawed, boxed in by circumstance and rendered with such interior depth that even a fleeting scene feels alive. O’Connor, on the other hand, often leans toward broader strokes, which doesn't always land effectively. Bigger emotions, more overt humor, more theatrical personalities. Sometimes that works wonderfully (I actually enjoyed The Drunkard, especially its sly, ironic ending), but in The Mad Lomasneys, the larger-than-life antics just started to feel a bit much.

By the time I reached the last page, I honestly didn’t care who ended up with whom. Maybe O’Connor will win me over with the next story I read. There’s still hope.

Oh well. Onward to the next card. Let’s see if I can actually finish this challenge before the clock runs out.