PUBLISHERS thinking short-story collections from an unknown writer won't move should think again. Odds are that Barry's magnificent collection will go into a second or third printing. Here are clutches of characters marooned in boredom, forlorn Irish villages where women pull the curtains in the afternoon and settle down to vodka and valium. In 'Ideal Homes' Mr Delahunt the blind shopkeeper believes he is secure against thieves. Two young wans who "wear trouble as a scent" enter the shop. "Just havin a quick gawk, Mr D." Mr Wang's watchful eyes in his takeaway slide warily from side to side, calculating like an abacus. In the wonderful 'See The Tree How Big It's Grown' a stranger arrives in town to explore the mysteries of Clonmel. He is cursed twice over; an amnesiac alcoholic. This is show stopping stuff. Hopefully this is an act of throat clearing that will eventually spit out a novel.

1916: The Long Revolution
Ed by Gabriel Doherty and Dermot Keogh Mercier Press, 20, 469pp

EXAMINING the legacy of the 1916 Insurrection continues to provoke lots of hot air . . . and we're still nine years away from the 100th anniversary. The line-up here is impressive: Yeats, George Russell, Adrian Hardiman, Profs Keith Jeffrey and D G Boyce.

Argument and counter argument. Had the 1916 leaders a mandate to take up arms? Answer: What mandate did the Brits have to occupy the country. Would we have been granted Home Rule? Yes but a limited rule with Westminster always peering over our shoulders. The political pond life in Northern Ireland was so foul in 1970 that the Provos would have emerged anyway;

they didn't need role models. And so on. Some thoughtful debates here.

Dropping the Habit By Marion Dante Poolbeg, 15, 294pp DANTE'S memoir is not exactly traumalit, but she certainly was a tortured soul for a while. She uses the word "detained" to describe the 32 years she spent in a convent. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. She entered a convent for all the wrong reasons at the biddable age of 14. Mammy who was "a sinner" because, although Marion's parents had married by the time Marion entered the convent, she had been born out of wedlock. Marion's sacrifice was an act of atonement for her mothers "sin". Of course, it doesn't work out; nervous breakdowns and breast cancer follow, a cancer brought on by anger. In one scene, after this innocent leaves the convent, she looks over another woman's shoulder to see how she is getting money out of an ATM machine. Murder on the heart.

Born on a Blue Day By Daniel Temmet Hodder, �7.00, 284pp TEN per cent of people with autism are gifted with savant abilities.

In his very charming memoir, Temmet, who has Asperger's syndrome, reveals the incongruities of his brain. Like someone new to English, he is literal minded. Asked to take a seat, he won't sit down, but will carry the chair home with him. He can learn a fiendishly difficult language like Icelandic in a few days, yet his favourite words are nouns because he can see them in the mind's eye. He can recite pi to 22,514 places from memory. FROM MEMORY. Not even Pat Kenny can do that. Temmet comes across as an obliging and charming creature.

Seminary Boy By John Cornwell Harper, �8.00, 339pp WHEN he was a boy, Cornwell, now a writer on all things religious, ran with a bad crew. Flung rocks through the windows of passing trains, whacked a nun over the head. So his Irish mother did what all 1940s Irish mothers did, hopefully turned him over to a priest.

He finished up in a seminary where he watched his soul, but also watched girls; sought the sight of God, but also sought his first kiss.

Terrible internal travails, crazy mixed-up kid. In the seminary, "particular friendships" are forbidden. As are newspapers and radios. Whistleblowing, but not with much warmth.