Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan 📚

This was Claire’s second collection of short stories, following Antarctica. Seven stories in all (in this edition that I read, some say there can be eight). I liked five of them and loved two. Worth buying the book just for the two alone.

I couldn’t read the book straight through. Some of these stories need to sit with you for a while, worthy of a good mulling. Her writing brings the people and these environments to life. They make you think. For me, she’s a powerful storyteller. Even days after I’ve finished the book, I’m still thinking about it.

If you are new to Keegan, read Foster and Small Things Like These first. I am in awe of how she writes; you are immersed in the scene so quickly. She and Maria Popova are two of my favorite writers.

Highly recommend.

It’s what she once wanted but two people hardly ever want the same thing at any given point in life. It is sometimes the hardest part of being human.

Deegan is now middle-aged. If it is a stage when some believe that much of life is over, and assume that what’s left is a downhill slope to be lived within the restraints of choices made[…]

Always a part of her craves the solitude that will let her mind calm down and her memory surface.

Now she sometimes imagined where she’d be, what she might be doing if she had not made her presence known. She was constantly afraid to take the smallest step in any direction. The greatest lesson the priest had taught her was the lesson of where one step can lead.

He’s a lonely man, she thought, and he’s desperate. But that goat! She’d have no time for that goat, sitting up like a witch in the dark.