Celtic tiger Ireland and the car as a liminal space: Movement and paralysis in gerard donovan’s Country of the Grand

Abstract

This article discusses three short stories published in Gerard Donovan’s Country of the Grand (2008). It reads one of the short story collection’s most prominent leitmotifs, the car, as a liminal space and a heterotopia of crisis. Furthermore, the article aims at linking these two concepts to ideas about Irish identity and the historical and cultural context of Celtic Tiger Ireland and it draws on a particular theoretical framework: Turner’s concept of the liminal period and the Foucauldian heterotopia of crisis. In Donovan’s short stories, the car is turned into an ambiguous symbol since it carries various meanings and connotations. It is a means by which people move and cross boundaries, which should enable progress and provide connections between places and persons but it is also a space in which characters sit still and seem isolated and static. Hence, this seemingly simple image provides insights about a tension arising between movement and paralysis which Donovan, through his use of symbols and synecdoches, describes as central to Celtic Tiger Ireland and which thus also becomes crucial for his short stories.