Claire Keegan’s Walk the Blue Fields is a collection of eight short stories, half of which are pretty darn amazing and half of which aren’t.
The Long and Painful Death is an amusing tale of a writer working at a fancy writing retreat in rural Ireland where she meets a local irate snob. The Parting Gift is a moving story of a young girl leaving behind an abusive childhood and escaping to a new, hopefully better, life.
The titular story is about a priest attending a wedding, where the bride was once a potential relationship for him before he left to join the Church. It deals with regret and doubt in a subtle but compelling way. The Forester’s Daughter is the longest and best story here - I reviewed it in a separate standalone edition so I won’t say anything further on it.
Close to the Water’s Edge is notable for being the only story set outside of Ireland. It’s set on the Texas coast where a young closeted man has an awkward birthday meal with his mother and piggish, but rich, stepfather, and has an almost fatal encounter when he flees the dinner. Surrender is about a grumpy former IRA sergeant who sets out to win back the woman who ended their relationship.
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.
Night of the Quicken Trees is the second longest story here and is my least favourite. It’s about two lonely people who find each other. It has an odd fairy-tale quality to it and I had no idea what it was supposed to be about, beyond maybe being an updated version of an Irish folk tale.
Dark Horses is the shortest story here and isn’t easy to describe. It’s well-written and you get a sense of what it’s about when you read it - love and hope? - but it’s also seven pages long and that brevity, combined with its general vagueness, makes it completely unmemorable even if it won an award.
As brilliant a writer as Claire Keegan is, Walk the Blue Fields has the same unevenness of most short story collections with its mix of stories that’ll hit and miss. Still, if you enjoyed her novels Small Things Like These and Foster, it’s worth a look for the good stories collected here, particularly The Forester’s Daughter which is almost as long as either of her novels.
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