Book review: Walk the Blue Fields, by Claire Keegan

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Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Not all of these stories are perfect - but the ones that are, are worth the price alone. I'm thinking of the two longer pieces, "The Forester's Daughter" and the last (mind-blowing) one, "Night of the Quicken Trees".

"The Forester's Daughter" is a distant cousin to Flaubert's "Madame Bovary". "Night of the Quicken Trees", meanwhile, reminded me of Shirley Jackson's "We Have Always Lived in the Castle", in its exploration of superstitions, beloved house animals, and wild lives on the fringe of small towns. Were the characters in Jackson's novella Irish Americans? I wonder... I wonder if certain fears and beliefs crossed the ocean.

At the end of the collection, amongst the people she thanked, was Colm Tóibín, which I thought was neat as the first story, "Parting Gift", reminded me of his novel "Brooklyn".

Some people in my bookclub weren't too impressed. They thought Keegan's style was too neat and clean. Perfect and simple sentences. The only flaw I found, to be honest, was a little overreliance on that age old stereotype of the Irish as fond of too much alcohol, and having too many children. And quite a preponderance of priests. But, all in all, the stories that work are so good that it doesn't really matter if Keegan slightly misses the mark with a few of them.

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