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Walk The Blue Fields – The Stinging Fly

What makes this collection a particular joy is the run and pleasure of the language. When a couple gets up to dance, he leads her across the floorboards "same as a cat's tongue moves along a saucer of cream". This is how she works the reader, with playfulness, skill and flow, though after the dance comes the chill: "The experience was like almost everything; it wasn't a patch on what it could have been." You might say the same of books; but not of this one, not this time. The freedom and range of Keegan's first collection, Antarctica, has narrowed to a town, a house, a few fields; and this stillness gives a close, lapidary beauty to the prose. Keegan is a writer who is instinctively cherished and praised. These stories are hard won. There are massive tensions held in balance here, a feat she manages through flawless structure and the unassailable tragedy of her characters' lives. In these seven, perfect short stories Claire Keegan presents a timeless world where the neighbours gossip, the cows stand bawling at the gate, and "the farmer's days are numbered." The hurts she describes are so ancient and keen that we find ourselves scrabbling for a timeline, noting avocado starters, wondering when the petrol strike was, and when the Ford Cortina went out of circulation.