Claire Keegan
An intro in the wonders of Claire keegan
by Demi Cox, Bookseller @ Unity Books Auckland
I overheard a customer say that Keegan’s books are like miniature form novels of Ian McEwan and although I think it’s appropriate to liken her writing to that calibre, I think her work is outstanding in its own right and she doesn’t require a comparison to McEwan, you know?
Honestly, I hadn’t heard of Keegan until her latest publication Small Things Like These, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2022. Known for her short fiction and stories, her writing captures whole worlds and emotions in words that are just enough but leave you hunting for more. She doesn’t publish often but when she does, she seems to create tidal waves. What I liked about Small Things Like These, and actually her other stories, is the way she depicts masculinity, especially a tender kind and that’s quite refreshing although perhaps not intentional.
I hadn’t really expressed an interest in Irish writing or writers but Keegan definitely kicked that off for me, perhaps in a similar way I became obsessed with German writers - I find there is a giant paradox when it comes to Irish identity (like all, really) and I like that.
One of my favourite stories of hers is from her collection Walk The Blue Fields, of a writer who has rented the German writer Heinrich Böll’s former house on Achill Island. She receives a visit from a German academic who becomes incredibly persistent and almost stalkerish, who wants to see where Böll wrote. I kind of feel this story speaks to some shared trauma or guilt, how we tell stories and remember the past and acknowledge the present.
Anyway, I really like her writing and because of her I’ve definitely stumbled into some fairy fort of Irish writing and it’ll be a long time before I find my way out, almost like a spell.
interviews with Claire Keegan we loved:
With The Booker Prize - 'My central character isn’t someone who says much. A longer novel would not have suited his personality' - Read here:
“Although the book features one of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries, you have said elsewhere that it is not about the Laundries. What would you say the book is about? Love, kindness, duty - something else?
It’s the story of a coalman named Bill Furlong who lives with his wife and five daughters in a small town, set in the weeks coming up to Christmas…I can’t now help thinking of Flannery O’ Connor, who said that a story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is!
I know some readers see it as a story of a simply heroic character. I’m not saying that my character isn’t heroic - but I see Furlong as a self-destructive man and that this is the account of his breaking down. He’s coming into middle age, suffering an identity crisis, doesn’t know who his father is, and he’s also coming to terms with the fact that he was bullied at school. And his workaholism, which until now has kept the past at bay, is wearing thin. It’s also a portrait of how difficult it was to practise being a good Christian in Catholic Ireland.”
With The New Yorker on Claire Keegan’s use of drama versus tension - Read here:
“Last year you published a novel, Small Things Like These that revolved around the horrific abuse of “fallen” women, imprisoned in Ireland’s Magdalene laundries. Did that form of institutionalized abuse start you thinking about other, milder manifestations of misogyny in Irish culture?
I don’t know that there was ever a time when I didn’t wonder in one way or another over why things were so badly divided between men and women. At no point did it ever make sense, as the women I encountered were every bit as capable and bright and handy as the men. And the girls as able as the boys. As a girl, I was not allowed to serve at Mass, to set foot on the altar. Boys, too, suffered, as they were taught that girls were dirty—which made us perversely desirable.”
With The Guardian on Keegan writing short works, the Magdalene Laundries and her new hobby, horse training -
“For me, I tell her, the nuns who run the laundry are wicked. But Keegan won’t have it. ‘If I was to go off and write the story told from the point of view of, let’s say, the mother superior, I would like to think that I might find a reason why that woman turned out to be that way, rather than just damning her,” she says. “I don’t think we were born that way, you know. I don’t think most people want to be nasty and visit harm on others on a daily basis.’ If the mother superior’s story is left untold, so is that of the girl found shivering in the coal shed. “I’m not saying she isn’t a person,’ says Keegan. ‘I’m saying that the book isn’t her story. And maybe that’s deeply appropriate, because so many women and girls were peripheral figures. They weren’t central. Not even to their own families, not even to their own parents.’”
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Antarctica won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.
Walk the Blue Fields won the Edge Hill Prize for the finest collection of stories published in the British Isles.
Foster, after winning the Davy Byrnes Award — then the world’s richest prize for a story — was chosen by The Times as one of the top 50 works to be published in the 21st Century. It is now part of the school syllabus in Ireland.
Small Things Like These was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Rathbones Folio Prize. It won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, the Ambassadors’ Prize for best Irish novel published in France, and The Kerry Prize for best Irish Novel of the year. It is now nominated for the Dublin Literary Award which is presented annually for the best novel in the world written or translated into English.
watch the trailer for the movie adaptation of Keegan’s short story foster
additional Claire Keegan paraphernalia
Read Claire’s story The Singing Cashier published on The Paris Review.
Read Jerry Griswold’s review of Antartica, Keegan’s book that won the Rooney Prize for Fiction, for the LA Times.
You can attend Claire Keegan’s workshop How Fiction Works in Wexford.
Watch Keegan answer questions on Small Things Like These for The Booker Prize: