Novel · 2019
Give Them Unquiet Dreams
A novel about the haunted territory of family, set in 1970s Irish Catholic Boston. Kirkus Best Book 2019.
A Curated Sample
Books & Essays
by James F. Mulhern
Silver Current Press · Philadelphia — Fiction, criticism, and craft from a writer with work in 350+ literary journals.
Featured Collection
All We Ever Needed · Stories
A sharp, compassionate collection turning toward families, lovers, teachers, and aging women who carry the past like a second body — set in Boston kitchens, Catholic households, Florida streets, and seaside towns.
By turns darkly funny, tender, and unsettling, the eight stories in this collection explore the strange ways people injure and rescue one another: a grandmother's cruelty masking loneliness, a teacher's performance of care hiding something more dangerous, a lover's betrayal opening into grief and reluctant self-knowledge.
“I write from mercy rather than judgment, and I extend that mercy to characters who may not deserve it, because none of us entirely do.”
— James F. Mulhern, Author's Note
Scholarly Essay
The Architecture of Mercy in the Fiction of James Mulhern
A sustained critical reading of All We Ever Needed, tracing the collection's recurring themes, motifs, character archetypes, allusions, and craft technique across all eight stories — with close reading and direct quotation throughout.
Recurring Themes
- Inheritance as both blessing and contamination
- Faith and its counterfeits
- The comedy that precedes horror
- Watching as a form of complicity
Motifs
- Salt water and the cure
- Food and candy as vectors of love and poison
- The "useless thing" that is secretly sacred
- The body in decay
Character Archetypes
- The profane grandmother-confessor
- The charlatan-healer
- The watchful, precociously clinical child
- The institution in slow collapse
Also by the Author
Selected Catalog
Novel · 2016
Molly Bonamici
A literary coming-of-age novel set in Italian-American Boston. Kirkus Reviewed, Readers' Favorite recognized.
Story Collection
Assumptions and Other Stories
Short fiction in the tradition of O'Connor, Joyce, and Poe. Kirkus Reviewed, Readers' Favorite 5★.
Novella · 2016
A Prayer for Home
A spare, lyrical novella praised by The Missouri Review. Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon Winner (UK).
Story Collection · 2018
About Aiden: Selected Stories
Stories adapted from Give Them Unquiet Dreams, gathered around a boy who shares his mother's second sight.
Poetry · 2020
Poems
Aesthetica Creative Writing Award shortlist, Best of the Net nominee — work published across the US, UK, and Ireland.
Full catalog and forthcoming titles at authorjamesmulhern.com/books ↗
Read More
Twenty-six essays on craft, imagery, and interpretation are collected at authorjamesmulhern.com — including studies of Molly Bonamici, Give Them Unquiet Dreams, and the poetry of Crossings.