A first collection from Irish-born Keegan spans the Atlantic, touching down in rural Ireland and the southern US-with results often familiar or stretched-for, yet deftly done and alluringly readable. In the title story, a happily married woman wants to find out what it's like to have sex with someone else-and does so indeed, in a psychological clunker that crosses Hitchcock with O. Henry while remaining ever-intriguing to the eye. A near-wizardry of language and detail, too, closes the volume, with "The Ginger Rogers Sermon," when a pubescent girl in Ireland, sexually curious, brings about the suicide of a hulking lumberman in a tone-perfect but morally inert story. In between are longer and shorter, greater and lesser tales. Among the better are "Men and Women," about a suffering Irish farmwife who at last rebels against a cruelly domineering husband; the southern-set "Ride If You Dare," about a couple who shyly meet after running personals ads; and "Stay Close to the Water's Edge," about a Harvard student who despises-and is despised by-his millionaire stepfather. Psychologically more thin or commonplace are "Storms," told by an Irish daughter whose mother went mad; "Where the Water's Deepest," a snippet about an au pair afraid of "losing" her charge; or "The Singing Cashier"-based on fact, we're rather pointlessly told-about a couple who, unbeknownst to their neighbors, commit "hideous acts on teenage girls." Keegan's best include the more maturely conceived "Passport Soup," about a man devoured by guilt and grief after his daughter goes missing while in his care; "Quare Name for a Boy," in which a young woman, pregnant by a single-fling boyfriend whom she no longer has an interestin, determines that she'll go on into motherhood without him; and the nicely sustained "Sisters"-one dutiful and plain, the other lovely and self-indulgent-who come to a symbolically perfect end. Carefully worked tales that are as good as many and better than most.
Praise for Antarctica
"That Keegan has a knack for story-telling is proved many times over, in stories that reject the parable approach for a more informal, intimate style . . . Her ear seems to tune in to the rhythms of life with enviably direct phrasing.” —New York Times Book Review
"Antarctica is an appropriate title for these spare and chilly stories by the up-and-coming Irish writer Claire Keegan. . . . Keegan [is] an authentic talent with a gimlet eye and a distinctive voice.” —Boston Globe
"In her debut collection, Keegan transcends well-worn themes of adultery and family discord, fashioning resonant stories with fairy-tale simplicity.” —Newsweek
Praise for Claire Keegan
"I did not think realism could be truly feminist until I saw Keegan wield its techniques . . . When realism is more revelatory of the world than reality itself, what can you do but feel grateful for Keegan’s mastery of it?” —The Atlantic
"Across her oeuvre, Keegan illuminates violence better than almost anyone, avoiding easy didacticism. She pulls apart the strands of misogyny in individuals and institutions, diagnosing the same problem in both . . . Throughout her career, Keegan seems to emphasize that we take nothing with us and that all that matters is what we give each other.” —Washington Post
"Reading Irish-born Claire Keegan is like succumbing to a drug: eerie, hallucinogenic, time-stopping. Her simplest sentences envelop the brain (and all the senses) in a deep, fully dimensional dream . . . Each story is as substantive as a novel, and as breathtaking . . . Unforgettable.” —San Francisco Chronicle
"Keegan is the kind of writer whose spare, slippery work you want to reread . . . [her] sentences shape shift the second time 'round, twisting themselves into a more emotionally complicated story.” — NPR
