A lonely walk

Keegan, Claire. Walk the Blue Fields. New York: Black Cat, 2007.

"Margaret Flusk had neither hat nor rubber boots nor a man." This sentence from the last short story in Walk the Blue Fields demonstrates the spare, practical, possibly harsh style of Keegan's collection. The Ireland she describes, vividly but calmly, is not the cliched character-of-its-own that appears in some stories. There aren't leprechauns or glistening green fields; rather, there's farm life, tough times, secrets, and love lost. That could happen anywhere; it happens to happen in Ireland.

I'm not usually much for short stories, preferring a larger investment for larger reward, but these seem complete somehow. Characters experience conflict and resolution before their pages end. It's just too bad (for them, at least) that the conclusions are often pretty grim: she still doesn't love you, she left you anyway, you escaped the home but likely not how it affected you. Don't dip into this book if you're looking for a jolly clog in a peat-smoke-filled pub. If you want stories that feel real, and more so because of the conviction of setting, go for it.

Rating: **1/2