“Caught Suddenly by the Land Shifting”

This chapter examines the representation of rural ageing masculinity in the recent short stories “Dark Horses” by Claire Keegan, “Little Disturbances” by Mary Costello, and “Night of the Silver Fox” by Danielle McLaughlin. It posits the idea of “positive ageing” as a neoliberal construct, suggesting that Keegan, Costello, and McLaughlin acknowledge and represent the individual complexities of ageing but do so without cloaking the material and mental difficulties associated with ageing in contemporary rural Ireland. In each story, the protagonists’ personal emotional growth is outweighed by a system which – in valuing economic utility and self-sufficiency over everything else – is intrinsically hostile to ageing masculinity and, indeed, young masculinity.