Walk the Blue Fields

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Claire Keegan…now gives us her best work yet. Small Things Like These is a short, wrenching, thoroughly brilliant novel mapping the path of one man’s conscience, its torment and vacillation between two courses of action. Either one bears a price…Spare and potent, this is a remarkable story.”— Minneapolis Star Tribune

Claire Keegan's brilliant debut collection, Antarctica, was a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year, and earned her resounding accolades on both sides of the Atlantic. Now she has delivered her next, much-anticipated book, Walk the Blue Fields, an unforgettable array of quietly wrenching stories about despair and desire in the timeless world of modern-day Ireland. In the never-before-published story “The Long and Painful Death,? a writer awarded a stay to work in Heinrich Böll's old cottage has her peace interrupted by an unwelcome intruder, whose ulterior motives only emerge as the night progresses. In the title story, a priest waits at the altar to perform a marriage and, during the ceremony and the festivities that follow, battles his memories of a love affair with the bride that led him to question all to which he has dedicated his life; later that night, he finds an unlikely answer in the magical healing powers of a seer.Our narrator receives a phone call early the next morning, a visitor wishing to present himself - he's actually outside the cottage. Our un-named narrator puts him off until 8 p.m., and what follows are the small preparations and the ways in which she occupies the free time of her first day. But it is beautifully done. I think Keegan with-holds the woman's name, because it then becomes so easy for the reader to slip herself into the story. A small extract: Even more unsettling was “The Parting Gift”….involving incest and the uncomfortable acceptance in the way the story is told. In another good story, “The Forester’s Daughter,” a woman marries a simple man, initially resistant to marry him because she doesn’t love him, and so you know how this works out, in spite of the birth of children over the years.

Because a great short story IS like the roar of wind and waves in our ears, the sting of salt on our eyes and lips. It tumbles us into an unknown world, propelling us towards the edge of new possibilities, towards new ways of seeing. Lccn 2007408869 Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Old_pallet IA17314 Openlibrary_edition A] stunning second collection . . . Keegan’s stories are the literary counterparts to Picasso’s Blue Period paintings. . . . Keegan’s first collection, Antarctica, led to comparisons with Raymond Carver, but Annie Proulx, with her distilled, poetic prose and attunement to remote landscapes, is a closer match.”— San Francisco Chronicle Sometimes everybody was right. For most of the time people crazy or sober were stumbling in the dark, reaching with outstretched hands for something they didn’t even know they wanted.’ Claire Keegan’s brilliant debut collection, Antarctica, was a Los Angeles TimesBook of the Year, and earned her resounding accolades on both sides of the Atlantic. Now she has delivered her next, much-anticipated book, Walk the Blue Fields, an unforgettable array of quietly wrenching stories about despair and desire in the timeless world of modern-day Ireland. In the never-before-published story "The Long and Painful Death,” a writer awarded a stay to work in Heinrich Böll’s old cottage has her peace interrupted by an unwelcome intruder, whose ulterior motives only emerge as the night progresses. In the title story, a priest waits at the altar to perform a marriage and, during the ceremony and the festivities that follow, battles his memories of a love affair with the bride that led him to question all to which he has dedicated his life; later that night, he finds an unlikely answer in the magical healing powers of a seer.

The land, which is a source of wealth and spirituality, also epitomizes duty, heritage and binding roots that imprison the main characters in the jail of their own resignation. And so they live with a conflicted sense of belonging that is naturally paired with alienation, which doggedly morphs them into natural exiles in their native country. Once again — Claire Keegan’s outstanding immersive writing is layered deeply with disturbing complexity. In “So Late in the Day,” Cathal faces a long weekend as his mind agitates over a woman with whom he could have spent his life, had he behaved differently; in “The Long and Painful Death,” a writer’s arrival at the seaside home of Heinrich Böll for a residency is disrupted by an academic who imposes his presence and opinions; and in “Antarctica,” a married woman travels out of town to see what it’s like to sleep with another man and ends up in the grip of a possessive stranger. Such simple sentences. But, everything is carefully constructed and builds to the exact mood of the piece. It's a very brilliant short story - as good as one by Chekov. On the edge of the road, a small, plump hen walked purposefully along, her head extended and her feet clambering over the stones. She was such a pretty hen, her plumage edged in white, as though she’d powdered herself before she’d stepped out of the house. She hopped down onto the grassy verge and, without looking left or right, raced across the road, then stopped, re-adjusted her wings, and made a clear line for the cliff. The woman watched how the hen kept her head down when she reached the edge and how, without a moment’s hesitation, she jumped over it. The woman stopped the car and walked to the spot from which the hen had flung herself. A part of her did not want to look over the cliff...