Walk the Blue Fields

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These short fictions by the Irish author Claire Keegan haven’t a style so much as a microclimate, a chill mist blowing in on a hard wind off the sea. . . . The author’s own storytelling powers have darkened and matured since her first collection, as she takes confident command of her craft.”— Boston Globe Keenly observed and surfaced are the depths of yearning known to everyone who cherishes hope for the future and the insidious grip the past continues to exert over the present. Despite this, evident too is the inward bent to flee, pull oneself up by the bootstraps, get up when one has stumbled, and keep moving forward even when there is no certainty of better days. Th descriptions and characterizations in these stories all have elements of tragedy …. sadness that can turn skin blue. Please consider this gorgeous book about Ireland today if you're looking for a non gross and stereotyping way to celebrate the day!

A note-perfect short story is something a very few people can produce. The Irish writer Claire Keegan does it in her second collection of stories. . . . Immaculate structure, a lovely, easy flow of language, and a certain stony-eyed realism about human experience; she is very much part of an Irish tradition, but a unique craftswoman for all that.”— Hilary Mantel, New Statesman Marvellous — exact and icy and loving all at once.”— Sarah Moss, author of Ghost Wall Praise for Walk the Blue Fields: 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.

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Unable to sit through the celebratory supper, the priest walks through blue fields (title!) and has an encounter with magic and maybe some kind of healing. Really surprising and well done. Lovely.

Foster is exactly as sad as you imagine it would be, but more stunningly alive than you have any right to expect. Its language settles in your belly and then your bones only seconds after it has passed your eyes… Keegan’s world is lush and full, the details delicately made, ever more rewarding and engaging with every read… While the scale of her story is modest — this one small girl, this short stretch of time — the scope of what Keegan can hold inside of it — the ache of living, the flash of seeing finally what we don’t have, the mourning for all we’ll never be — is as big, brash and ambitious as a story might be.”— Los Angeles Times As usual, I loved the first and last stories, but I also liked the feminist strain in these stories--the unwanted visitor, the wayward priest, the unloving husband. I like the exploration of desire/lust as shaping lives, and the place of quirky Irish characters (reminded me a bit of Flannery O-Connor here) and the rich presence of Irish myth. 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.

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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. A note-perfect short story is something a very few people can produce. The Irish writer Claire Keegan does it in her second collection of stories. . . . Immaculate structure, a lovely, easy flow of language, and a certain stony-eyed realism about human experience; she is very much part of an Irish tradition, but a unique craftswoman for all that.” –Hilary Mantel, New Statesman I know that road, that cliff, that island, from childhood holidays, so it was with a little racing of the heart, a little skip, a little hop over the edge into a well of forgotten memories that I read the first story in this collection. Keegan is so good at conjuring place that I was there on the edge of the cliff, peering over the rim of the world alongside the woman watcher, feeling the wind whip my eyes and the salt burn my lips while the waves filled my ears with their tremendous sound. Achill really is such a wild outcrop. Anything can happen there, and ideas for great short stories are no exception. That cliff is on the seaward side of a winding road high over the Atlantic ocean on the western edge of the island of Achill, itself perched on the western edge of the island of Ireland.