Walk the Blue Fields

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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.

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.

Keegan has been compared to Trevor and Chekhov in her skills and style. I'm not expert enough to make that comparison but will say that these stories are very successful. My favorite is the titled story. "Walk the Blue Fields", the story of a priest's meandering walk after officiating at a local wedding, the painful search he is on, the unexpected conclusion. Wonderfully written. Bu tür öykülerde hem yabancı hem tanıdık şeyler buluyorum. Bir öykü kişisinin "ayaksuyunu" dışarı dökmezse eve uğursuzluk geleceğine dair inancı bana tuhaf gelse de bu inancın arkasında tanıdık bir geçmiş görüyorum. Kitabı güzel yapan sadece bu değil elbette. Keegan'ın cümlelerindeki samimiyet ve hikaye kurmadaki üstün yeteneği insanı asıl etkileyen. Memleketine bakıp oradan güzel hikayeler devşiren şehirli bir yazar gibi değil de bu hikayelerle büyümüş modern bir yazar gördüm onda. Reading Irish-born Claire Keegan is like succumbing to a drug: eerie, hallucinogenic, time-stopping. Her simplest sentences envelop the brain (and all the senses) in a deep, fully dimensional dream . . . Each story is as substantive as a novel, and as breathtaking . . . Unforgettable.” — San Francisco Chronicle Please consider this gorgeous book about Ireland today if you're looking for a non gross and stereotyping way to celebrate the day!

I will not rate these stories separately because I found each one to be special in its own way, which is rare in a short story collection. At the end of the book, Keegan includes a brief segment on the folklore, specific terminology and geography featured in some of the stories. I would recommend reading that part before reading the stories. 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. Perfect short stories . . . flawless structure . . . What makes this collection a particular joy is the run and pleasure of the language.”—Anne Enright, winner of the 2007 Man Booker Prize, The Guardian Keegan] is a superb stylist: every well-structured paragraph contains multitudes . . . Incredibly engrossing . . . She constructs her stories from a skeleton of inferences that rise, gloriously, to form complex urges, crimes, desires, rebellions and, crucially, universal truths. Each brief work is worth the wait: Keegan is something special.” — Sunday Times (UK) He led her across the floorboards same as a cat’s tongue moves along a saucer of cream.’ - from ’The Forester’s Daughter

Awards

s pleasure to be had in history. What’s recent is another matter and painful to recall.” ( from the story “Walk the Blue Fields”)

The best collection of short stories by any Irish writer in recent years. These are strange, haunting, sometimes funny tales, utterly unique in their way of seeing life. I can’t remember the last time I felt such awe when reading the work of a new writer.” – The Week 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.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. This is one of the most exceptional collections of short stories to be published by any Irish writer in recent years. Claire Keegan writes with the most extraordinary grace. Her words and images float. Many of the stories are unforgettable. This book will surely place her where she truly belongs: among the greatest practitioners of the short story form now writing.” –Joseph O’Connor, author of Star of the Sea 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.’

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 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:The first two tales in this collection are among the finest short fiction I have read in several years, which includes the new tales in John McGahern’s posthumous New and Selected Stories. That’s how good Keegan can be. The remarkable title tale follows a priest on the day of a wedding . . . “Parting Gift,” which opens the book, is a gem of compactness. . . . Its centre of gravity resonates with such force that the story could easily stretch to a novel.” –Tom Adair, The Scotsman