A trio of brilliantly polished stories . . . In Keegan’s expert hands, even a minor skirmish—between a pushy older man and the writer who grudgingly lets him interrupt her solitude at an artist’s residency—illuminates how the sexes so often seem to navigate the world on completely different operating systems.” — People Magazine, Book of the Week With that said, the writing quality is impressively high and the prose in many of the stories fairly sings in the description of rural Irish life. 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.

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. 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.”—Heller McAlpin, San Francisco Chronicle

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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. A forrester courts a woman who grudgingly marries him. This is a story of how a half-hearted marriage becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of heartache and grief. The penny pinching forrester brings a dog home as a gift for the daughter's birthday. That it is not really a gift has dire consequences. Secrets too are revealed.

These magnificent stories are like a smoothly sanded wood surface, all paint stripped away to show the natural growth of the timber, the glowing colour of the tree's inner life, the bare truth without overblown decoration. Bauhaus, not Baroque. These stories are pure magic. They add, using grace, intelligence and an extraordinary ear for rhythm, to the distinguished tradition of the Irish short story. They deal with Ireland now, but have a sort of timeless edge to them, making Claire Keegan both an original and a canonical presence in Irish fiction.”—Colm Tóibín, author of The Master and Mothers and Sons 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. Hope lurks somewhere in almost all [Keegan’s] stories. . . . You start out on the paths of these simple, rural lives, and not long into each, some bit of rage or unforgivable transgression bubbles up . . . Then the truly amazing happens: Life goes on, limps along, heads for some new chance at beauty.” –Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Book ReviewClaire Keegan’s brilliant debut collection, Antarctica, was named a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year and earned her resounding accolades on both sides of the Atlantic. She continues her outstanding work with this new collection of quietly wrenching stories of despair and desire in modern-day Ireland.

Both stories are well-written but I also didn’t feel anything strongly towards either of them. They’re not nearly as compelling as some of the others or seem to be about anything. A mean spirited IRA sergeant behaves in a superior manner to his subordinate and the people in town. It is war time and bread is scarce. He visits a baker to buy a loaf of white bread (bread the baker’s son eyes longingly) and a crate of oranges that is to serve as comfort food. We find out why. Later in a section on story notes, the author reveals why oranges featured in this story. upped the rating from 4.5 to 5. After thinking about these stories during the past few days, I realize that they have lingered in a very good way.Hope lurks somewhere in almost all [Keegan’s] stories. . . . You start out on the paths of these simple, rural lives, and not long into each, some bit of rage or unforgivable transgression bubbles up . . . Then the truly amazing happens: Life goes on, limps along, heads for some new chance at beauty.”— Los Angeles Times Book Review 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. In her debut collection, Keegan transcends well-worn themes of adultery and family discord, fashioning resonant stories with fairy-tale simplicity.”— Newsweek Dunagore was a strange place without so much as a tree, nor a withered leaf to be seen in autumn, just the shivering bogland and all the gulls wheeling around, screeching under restless clouds. The landscape looked metal, all sturdy and everlasting to Margaret, coming from a place of oak and ash, it was without substance.’

He led her across the floorboards same as a cat’s tongue moves along a saucer of cream.’ - from ’The Forester’s Daughter the trees are tall and here the wind is strangely human. A tender speech is combing through the willows. In a bare whisper, the elms lean.’ He’s not a terrible human being, necessarily, but he is gruff and selfish, maybe to be seen as a traditional (which is to say selfish, patriarchal) Irish male. He yells at her for her spending “my money on roses,” and so flowers play an important part in making meaning for her sad life.For non-Irish, terms and even entire sections of dialog can be hard to follow or downright unintelligible, making it difficult to appreciate scenes or interactions which may (or may not) be key to understanding. Keegan’s] . . . collections have drawn comparisons to William Trevor and Anton Chekhov . . . [She] crafts stories out of small details and insight . . . like poetry. . . . Claire Keegan is the real deal.”—Keith Donohue, “You Must Read This” NPR.com Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2020-01-10 14:07:58 Boxid IA1755605 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier