Name: Walk the Blue Fields
Rating: 4.272727272727272 (11 reviews)
ISBN: 9780802170491

Claire Keegan

Against the setting of modern-day Ireland, a collection of short fiction explores the themes of despair and desire.

Walk the Blue Fields

Grace McCarter

Inside, she filled the big glass jug with water and arranged the fuchsia in an unruly display on the kitchen table. She made for herself a light supper of sliced tomatoes and cheese, and ate at the table with yesterday's bread and a glass of red wine. When the dishes were rinsed and put away, she lit the fire and returned to the Chekhov story. 

It was the story of a woman whose fiancé was not engaged in any type of work but was known, instead, as someone who played music.

Deegan is not a religious man. He knows that beyond this world theres nothing. God is an invention created by one man to keep another at a safe distance from his wife and land.

Phil

I found it opaque and ambiguous. Some of the Irish dialogue is difficult to understand and some of the themes are dark. Some of the stories do not provide a satisfactory conclusion. The writing style is first-rate, despite it sometimes being difficult to understand. I never felt invested in the characters. Generally, I prefer a novel to a collection of short stories.<br /><br />Two messages across the stories: (1) The lives people settle for can become prisons—and the tragedy often begins with a failure to act. (2) Silence does not make painful realities disappear; it usually makes them more destructive.<br /><br />The book also explores how people become trapped between the life they actually have and the life they once imagined they might have.

Gelaine Trinidad

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 masterful portrait of a country wrestling with its past and of individuals eking out their futures, Walk the Blue Fields is a breathtaking collection from one of Ireland’s greatest talents, and a resounding articulation of all the yearnings of the human heart.

Stories

Sarah McMullan 

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 Boll'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 masterful portrait of a country wrestling with its past and of individuals eking out their futures, "Walk the Blue Fields" is a breathtaking collection from one of Ireland's greatest talents, and a resounding articulation of all the yearnings of the human heart.

Walk the Blue Fields

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