Vivid vignettes skilfully rendered in author’s first collection

Dark Roots. By Cate Kennedy, Atlantic Books, €16.25

I n Seizure, one of the finest stories in this distinctive collection, a woman witnesses a stranger tending to a passerby who is having a violent epileptic fit.

She walks on eventually, but the stranger’s tenderness makes her question the rudimentary affections of her boundlessly energetic boyfriend.

She spends the next few hours trying to articulate her frustration in her head, faltering towards a single ...