"Antarctica" by Claire Keegan (Faber, 1999)

Stories from Paris Review, etc.

• Antarctica - She's married with adolescent kids. She's always wondered what an affair would be like. With the rest of the family away she stays in a hotel and picks up a man who's caring. In his place she enjoys the sex - "Afterwards they smoked - she hadn't smoked in years, quit before the first baby." She sneaks off back to her hotel early the next morning. He finds her. He leads her rather forcefully into the woods. Then they return to his place. He's a good cook. Next morning she finds that she's handcuffed to the bed. He goes to work.
• Love in the tall grass - It's the last day of 1999 and Cordelia is nearly 40. The doctor (married with kids) used to visit her each Thursday about 10 years before, then his wife found out and he stopped, promising Cordelia that he'd leave his wife in 10 years. She became a recluse. Today she's going out to find him. His wife finds her first to say that the deal's off. The doctor arrives. The last sentence is "All three of them just sit there and wait: Cordelia, the doctor and his wife, all three mortals waiting, waiting for somebody to leave."
• Where the water's deepest - An au pair rows the boy out on the lake so he can fish. She has recurring dreams about failing to save his life. Alone in the evening, she fishes alone by a pier. He tries to surprise her from behind, then is suddenly scared of the deep, dark water behind her. She comforts him and carries him back to the house. [an analogy for a relationship? They fish in different ways]
• The Ginger Rogers Sermon - She's a 13 y.o. tomboy with a brother Eugene. She looks after a horse. Their parents like dancing, considering it important. Their father employs a big man they called "Slapper Jim" who can't dance well. He has a much smaller girlfriend. The main character goes to a dance, sees people snogging outside. When Jim has to stay in their house because of bad weather, she sneaks into his bed and tosses him off. Next day she find him hanging from a tree. The final 3 pages are about the wake. There's dancing, no hint of guilt. [my favourite so far]
• Storms - There's a chest in the old dairy that the young narrator, Ellen, looks through. Ellen's life changed when her mother dreamed of her mother's death. She died and Ellen's mother became strange. She was taken away in a van and Ellen visits weekly. [I don't get it]
• The singing cashier - The c.16 y.o. narrator who's given up school lives with her older sister Cora, who works at Tesco. Whenever the postman arrives, the narrator's send out on an errand so that Cora can have sex in exchange for fish. One day they discover that girls their age have been killed by a man their father knew. Cora stops inviting the postman in. [Slight. Only 7 pages]
• Burns - It begins with "They will try it out for summer. Together they will confront their past, the source of all their trouble, and stamp it out. That, at least, is the theory." He's moved to an old farmhouse with his 3 kids and new wife Robin. His first wife harmed the kids? While he's out, cockroaches invade the kitchen and the rest of the family jump onto the kitchen island. He returns and fights them off. [No]
• Quare name for a boy - She returns from England to Ireland - maybe for good this time. Last Xmas when she came back she had a 6 day affair. She's pregnant now. She goes to Dublin to see the father - "I want you to say you love me, even though I don't love you ... If I must carry the child, the least you can do is love me." They discuss names. She begins to think that she doesn't want to see him again. [No]
• Ride if you dare - USA. 2 PoVs - Roslin and a man she's made a date with. After 10 years of marriage she's realised she's bored and risks becoming a drunk. After a meal they go off in her truck. They see a funfair. He wants to stop. She's too scared to go on the Big Wheel. They try a long slide, strapped together. She nearly bottles out. "She looks down. It is even steeper than she imagined. When it happens, it happens fast." [No]
• Men and women - She works on the farm for her father while her brother Seamus studies for school. Her mother, like nearly all the women she knows, can't (or pretend they can't) drive. Her parents sleep in different rooms. She (her first-person PoV) still believes in father Christmas. They go to a New Year's Eve event. Her father dances with other women. Old men want to dance with her. On the drive home (her father drinking) her mother wins a psychological game of power about who should open the gate. He does, and she takes over the wheel [. I've read this before, in "The Granta book of the Irish short story". I like it]
• Sisters - The mother of Betty and younger, prettier sister Louisa died suddenly when the girls were little. Betty stayed in Ireland to help on their father's farm, then cared for him until his death a year ago. Betty's 50 now. Louisa went to England and married. Now, at the start of the summer holidays, she's come to visit with children Ruth (9) and older Edward. Louisa says her husband will arrive soon. During the holiday they don't help or pay for anything. Betty says to Louisa that she thinks she doesn't actually have a dishwasher, and that Louisa's left her husband. She then starts cutting Louisa's hair short. Next day Louisa leaves with her children.
• A scent of winter - Hanson, a lawyer with a pregnant wife, drives with his 2 kids plus their nanny to visit Greer. They all fish in a lake. Then Hanson and Greer talk over a few drinks. A negro raped Greer's wife months before. She's refusing to eat. Greer locked the man up. As Hanson and his family leave, they see the negro escape over the fields. The nanny scream 'I quit! I quit! You goddam sons-a-barbarian-bitches!' and joined the negro. [I don't get this. So Greer didn't report it because of the shame? Is the nanny black?]
• You can't be too careful - J.E., born 1943, is called by Butch at 3am because Butch wants to go fishing with J.E. in his boat. While they're in the Mississippi Delta Butch drinks and says he killed his adulterous wife. J.E. fears he'll be killed. After many hours, Butch takes J.E.'s truck keys, exchanges his bloodstained shirt for J.E.'s and abandons J.E. on an island. It's J.E.'s 1st-person PoV - in the form of a statement trying to defend his actions, letting Butch escape [I like the details]
• The burning palms - A boy was with his mother at his gran's house when a lorry hit the house killing his mother. After, the boy helps his gran put up wallpaper with a palm tree design. Gran sets the house alight. He rushes in to save her pension book and photos then from a safe distance the 2 of them watch the house burn.
• Passport soup - Frank and Elsie's daughter has gone missing - she disappeared while he was responsible for her. Elsie serves him soup with 9 passport-sized photos of their daughter in it. Then she attacks him, which he prefers to her ignoring him.

Mothers die. Women are missing something in their lives. Hopes/promises are broken. Couples bore each other or are unfaithful. At the end of stories I often felt disappointed, liking the set-up and details but feeling I've missed a layer or two.

Other reviews

• jacquiwine (alongside stories of dysfunctional families and blighted lives, there are instances of women breaking away from the constraints that bind them, stories of burgeoning sexuality, experimentation and revenge. There’s also a sense of Keegan trying out different styles and techniques in this collection, perhaps to see which approaches would suit her best. ... For me, the standout story in this collection is Sisters)
• Philip McCann (the stories explore mostly rural family life, whether in Ireland, the US or Britain. In several, an irrepressible, imaginative girl looks with curiosity on the range of human nature and the quirks of fate. There are a few too many Virgin Marys, Sister Emmanuels and 'Glory Be's for my taste ... there is no modernist alienation, no women's stance. Post-feminist women spontaneously play traditional roles one moment, dominate the next and the femininity is as fresh, unselfconscious and natural as the voice is original.)
• booksaremyfavouriteandbest (There were some stories that fell short for me – they either ended in a way that didn’t feel satisfying (and you’re aware of this because Keegan does leave you wondering in some stories but in a welcome way) or were told from a perspective that wasn’t fully convincing (incidentally, these were the stories focused on male characters in America).)
• whisperinggums (It is this sense – this idea of telling stories about humans without judgement – that underpins Keegan’s writing for me. ... It’s hard to pick favourites, but of course I do have some. “Antarctica”, “Love in the tall grass”, “Men and women” and “Sisters”)

"Small things like these" by Claire Keegan (Faber 2021)

110 pages. It's 1985, Ireland, nearly Xmas. Bill Furlong, 40, a coal/wood supplier, has a clever wife and 5 daughters. He's never known who his father was. He was helped by the widow where his mother had been a maid, and Ned had been a lodger. Bill's kind. His wife thinks he's too generous.

Once when he delivered to the convent (also a laundry) he was surprised that the girls were locked in and keen to get out. Now when he delivers to the convent he finds a girl in the coal shed. She says she was a 14-week baby. He takes her to the nuns who are nice to her. On Xmas eve there's snow. He treats his workers to a cafe meal. The owner hints that he shouldn't upset the church - they're all in it together. He wants his kids to go to the good Catholic school. Someone points out that he and Ned look like each other. He sees crows eat and later get eaten.

On the way home he gets some shoes as a present for his wife. He wonders if Ned (now in hospital) is his father (Ned's never hinted that he is). He passes the convent and finds the girl in the coal shed again. He takes her away - not to the priest, because Bill realises he knows what goes on in the convent. He takes the barefoot girl through the town centre to his house, still carrying the shoe-box.

Feels like a too long short story.

A note at the end says that the last "Magdalen laundry" closed in 1996.

• "and the frosts took hold again, and blades of cold slid under doors and cut the knees off those who still knelt to say the rosary" (p.2) - doesn't sound right
• "a dog was licking something from a tin can, pushing it noisily across the frozen pavement with his nose" (p.51) - I like this

Other reviews

• Lamorna Ash (Why, then, does Small Things Like These not feel quite as devastating, as lasting, as Keegan’s previous work? Perhaps, for the first time in her writing, the lightness here has become too light – is kept too far away from the darkness that lurks at the other side of the town.)
• THÚY ĐINH
• elizabeth baines' reading group

"Walk the blue fields" by Claire Keegan (Faber and Faber, 2007)

• The Parting Gift - The story begins with

  When sunlight reaches the foot of the dressing table, you get up and look through the suitcase again. It's hot in New York but it may turn cold in winter. All morning the bantam cocks have crowed. It's not something you will miss. You must dress and wash, polish your shoes. Outside, dew lies on the fields, white and blank as pages. Soon the sun will burn it off. It's a fine day for the hay

  An Irish girl's leaving her farm for the States. Her mother (who sometimes made her share her father's bed) is sad. Her brother, who gives her a lift to the airport, says (at last) that he's sorry he didn't help, and that he's not going to take on the farm. But she thinks she will.
  In "The scent of the hay drifts up from neighbouring fields. As soon as the dew burns it off, the Rudd brothers will be out in the meadows" (p.4) I wonder if "it" should be there.
• Walk the blue fields - The most impressive story I've read for a while. After a wedding he's conducted, a priest mixes with the already drunk guests. He has a secret. The conversation is loose, witty.

  'Is that glass half full or half empty would you say, Father?' 'It's whatever you think,' the priest says. 'Well, I don't know what else you've been drinking,' the woman says, 'but surely it can't be one without being the other.' The barber frowns and then its meaning registers.

  He walks away. We learn that he'd had an affair with the bride, who gave him an ultimatum - leave the church or leave her. He stumbles upon the caravan of a Chinese man he'd heard about at the reception. The Chinese man's English is poor, but his remedies are trusted. He gives the priest a massage. It helps.
• Dark horses - A man could have married a woman had it not been for her horses, or more likely, drink. The weakest story in the collection.
• The forester's daughter - a woman in an unhappy marriage with a farmer has 3 children - a clever girl, a simpleton and another son. At a social gathering she tells a story about a woman in an unhappy marriage who had sex with a salesman leading to a girl's birth. At the end, the family stand in the lane watching their home burn down. It's a long story with too many dreams. There are surprising phrases: "The retriever has sheltered for the night under the trees and the forester has, in fact, roused him from a dream of ponies chasing him through a bog." (dog's PoV, p.58) and "He has never understood the human compulsion for conversation: people when they speak say useless things" (dog's PoV, p.64); "In the sky a few early stars are shining of their own accord" (p.61).
• Close to the water's edge - A boy has a holiday with his mother and outspoken step-father. He goes for a swim and gets into difficulties. The ending provides more information about his mother.
• Surrender - A sergeant receives a letter and her ring from his fiancee. He decides that next day he'll visit her (probably to propose) - a long bicycle ride. But first he makes a local visit. Much is left unsaid.
• Night of the quicken trees - Infused with folklore. A woman nearly menopausal moves into a cottage left her by a relative - a priest who she'd had a child by, a cot-death victim. In the next cottage lives a 54 year old bachelor, a virgin who has a live-in goat. She gets her future told, acquires a reputation as a healer, has a child by the bachelor and a few years later, leaves. I finally liked the story more than I expected to.

It's the endings that I learnt the most from.

Other reviews

• Anne Enright (Although they circle around similar themes, each story is in fact a different narrative world, with different rules, different possibilities for metaphor, or change. )
• Rachel Balik (Critics have compared Keegan to Anton Chekhov, perhaps because she captures the pathos of an entire nationality the way he does. But none of the melodrama of Chekhov's characters is present in Keegan's)
• Olivia Heal (There is surely something in the Irish voice that is different. The sense of belonging is coupled, perhaps naturally, with one of exile.)