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Of Good and Bad Hopes
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jun 16 2025
Pages: 210
Weight: 0.63
Height: 0.44 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Of Good and Bad Hopes
by Max O'Rover
Its literature is beautiful. Its landscapes fantastic. Its people wonderful.
This line, found near the end of the book, also opens it-for good reason. Of Good and Bad Hopes is a collection of short stories that traces a seventeen-year journey through memory, belonging, and the places that shape us. These are stories of return, of identity, of shadows carried forward, and of pasts that never quite existed but refuse to be forgotten.
Written across two languages and many lives, the stories gathered here were not all born to be together-but found each other nonetheless. Some are quiet reflections; others roar with the urgency of change. All are bound by the fragile, powerful thread of hope-good, bad, or altogether misplaced.
Inspired in tone and texture by the likes of John Banville-whose line The past beats inside me like a second heart serves as a quiet heartbeat for the book-this collection speaks to anyone who has ever left a place, or found one they could finally call home. For the author, that home became Ireland.
A love letter to language, land, and longing, Of Good and Bad Hopes is a deeply personal and resonant debut in English by Italian-born, Irish-based writer Max O'Rover.
Some stories began as fragments. Some grew into novels. But each carries the echo of the one who wrote them-and the worlds they remember.
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