Two novellas set in Ireland (I know this because the back of the book told me, not because either of the novellas did) both contain a lot of senseless death and a lot of grimy sex. By 'grimy' I mean that I think everyone having sex in either story could end up catching more diseases from the places they choose to do it in than from their partner.
Also, the style of the writing seems poetic for the sake of discussing terrible and gross things in the most pulchritudinous language possible. The descriptions dance around the objects they seek to identify so that each sentence is a puzzle the reader has to figure out before it makes any sort of sense. To be honest, it made my head hurt. And, once I realized what the author was saying, I didn't want to have known it. Also, some of it just never made any sort of sense to me. "A wife's kiss is the sound of Betty Grable's heart broken with frost in the night." What? ( )