By Terry Kenneally
Off the Shelf: Antarctica
Grove Press ISBN 978-0-8021-6374-5 224 pp 1999
Walk the Blue Fields
Grove Press 978-0802170491 1928pp 2008.
Both by Claire Keegan
Reviews by Terry Kenneally
Acclaim for Claire Keegan’s writing continues to mount, bolstered by her most recent book, “Small Things Like These,” which has been made into a movie, starring Cillian Murphy, as well as The Quiet Girl (Irish: An Cailin Cuion), based on the short story Foster (both were previously reviewed in iIrish). This month’s Off the Shelf column features a review of Keegan’s first two short story collections, Antarctica, and Walk the Blue Fields.
Often dark and enveloped in a palpable atmosphere, the reader feels that something momentous is lurking within each of these carefully sculpted stories. First published in 1999, and proclaimed “an impressive debut,” by William Trevor, Antarctica introduced the world to Claire Keegan, whose short fiction has since captured readers attention worldwide and established her as “among the foremost masterful practitioners” (New York Times).
A collection of 16 stories beautifully consistent throughout, I was particularly taken with Antarctica, about a happily married woman who “wondered how it would feel to sleep with another man.” When she goes away for the weekend by herself on the pretense of Christmas shopping, she meets a man in a hotel bar and proceeds to go to bed with him. Her adventure turns into something she could never have wished for.
In Love in the Tall Grass, Cordelia remains on her date with her former lover that she has wasted for nine years for. Two sisters find themselves on very different paths in Sisters and a mistreated mother and housewife gets a chance to stand up to her husband at last, in Passport Soup. These stories and the others demonstrated she had a knack for story telling many times over.
Keegan followed Antarctica in 2008 with Walk the Blue Fields, an unforgettable array of quietly wrenching stories about deception and desire in modern-day Ireland. In the title story, a priest waits at the altar to perform a marriage. During the ceremony and the festivities that follow, he battles his memories of a love affair with the bride that led him to question all to which he has dedicated his life.
Long and Painful Death, a writer awarded a stay to work in Heinrich Boll’s old cottage has her peace interrupted by an unwelcome intruder, whose ulterior motives only emerge as the night progresses.
This collection of stories set in Ireland center around six very different people with different lives. They do not know each other, but they might as well. They are all people who are deeply lonely for one reason or another.
Consider reading this book as well to experience Claire Keegan at her best. They are all TOP SHELF reads.
