Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan
Looking back at my Goodreads, I can see I first read this book back in 2009, seventeen years ago. I have memories of being impressed by it, but can't remember much more than that. Claire Keegan has soared in popularity since — Small Things Like These, Foster, The Quiet Girl film that was based on— so I thought it time for a revisit.
My memory was jogged by a trip to Laragh in Co. Wicklow a few months ago. Unable to get food beyond crisps and sandwiches at the local hotel due to filming taking place, I approached the security lad and asked what they were filming. Walk the Blue Fields, he said. Ah said I, Claire Keegan. He wouldn't tell me who was in it, but I was able to find out later it was Andrew Scott, Emily Blunt and Ciarán Hinds, amongst others. There were cameras about, but I don't think they'll be using footage of the exhausted hiker with a pint of Guinness and bags of Tayto strewn in front of him.
Short Stories
It’s difficult to pick one story over another, such is the strength of the collection, but I’ll go with the ones that had the most emotional resonance with me. It’s a short collection, but it took me a while to get through as one story tended to stay with me a couple of days before I was ready to move onto the next one.
The second shook me — The Parting Gift, about a young girl on the morning she emigrates from Ireland. So much packed into such a short story: trauma, grief, and by the end some sort of release. I just had to check again — twelve pages.
The title story came back to me as soon as I started it, and I knew why they were using the pub in Laragh — it begins with a wedding reception, and features a priest. I can't wait to see what they make of it and will be keeping an eye on Netflix.
It's impossible to pick a standout. There's a wildness and dark humour to some of the longer stories, such as the final Night of the Quicken Trees, about a woman who moves into a cottage next door to Stack, a farmer who shares his household with a sleek brown goat called Josephine. There's something folklore-rich and chaotic to this, but like the rest there's an emotional resonance to it that pierced my heart.
I'm a fan of the great John McGahern, so I took particular delight in Surrender, based on his father, who was a constable in rural Cavan. There's also the emotional distance between people, exemplified by The Forester's Daughter, with Deegan and Martha trapped in a loveless marriage, a stifling home life that neither can escape.
Keegan has such a beautiful ear for dialogue. There's not a word out of place, everything pared down. I love how powerfully brief her sentences are — she gets to the point, painting scenes with the barest of strokes, slivers of details.
If there's a thread running through the collection, it's the emphasis on moral dilemmas in rural Irish life — (maybe with the exception of Close to the Water's Edge, which seems oddly out of place) — and people doing their best to deal with whatever hand life deals them. But ultimately, it's about how much joy there is to be found in the human experience.
She's a master of the short story. One word, then a sentence, a paragraph. Building, slowly, until something emerges. Just a beautiful collection.
First published January 1, 2007 - 168 pages
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