The Reservoirs Are Colder and Deeper Than You Think & Mental Illness and Masculinity in the Short Stories of Kevin Barry

Steciuk, John (2024) The Reservoirs Are Colder and Deeper Than You Think & Mental Illness and Masculinity in the Short Stories of Kevin Barry. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

The creative and critical components of this thesis explore themes of mental illness and masculinity in the short story form.

In the critical component, I contend that the dreamlike nature of the short story form makes it particularly well-suited to address the subject of mental illness. To aid me in demonstrating this, I look closely at the short stories of Kevin Barry, a writer whose work frequently engages with the subject of mental illness. I argue that in his collection Dark Lies the Island (2012), Barry utilises the formal and thematic features of the short story to create dreamlike simulations of mental illness. These simulations place the reader inside the minds of protagonists living with mental illness, thereby granting them an insight into how it might feel to experience mental illness first-hand. I go on to explore some of the implications of these ‘proxy-experiences’ of mental illness: in particular, the role that stories such as these can play in destigmatising and demystifying issues of men’s mental health.

The creative component consists of a collection of linked short stories — titled The Reservoirs Are Colder and Deeper Than You Think — which is in part inspired by my lived experience of mental illness. Each of the collection’s ten stories takes place in the fictional town of Midden, a strange, wind-battered ‘home for the insane’ in the post-industrial north of England. Like Barry, in these stories, I utilise the formal and thematic features of the short story to create a dreamlike simulation of mental illness. However, whereas Barry uses these features to close the psychic distance between the reader and the protagonist, my aim is to close the distance between the reader and the author. In this way, I aim to communicate a sense of how it feels to inhabit my particular consciousness, my particular psychopathology.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	19 Jun 2025 10:50
Last Modified:	19 Jun 2025 10:50
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/99648
DOI:

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