Antarctica
'A genuine once-in-a-generation writer.' THE TIMES
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- 11,99 €
Publisher Description
The stunning debut story collection from the author of Foster and the Booker Prize shortlisted Small Things Like These
'A beautiful, tender work of great clarity.' Sebastian Barry
'Simply put, Claire Keegan is one of the greatest fiction writers in the world.' George Saunders
'Among the finest contemporary stories written recently in English.' Observer
A secret one-night tryst in the city. A sister's revenge. A love-struck doctor. A missing girl. In Antarctica, an astonishing sequence of stories, one of our most gifted writers illuminates human longing and fallibility in all its variety.
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Readers love Antarctica:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'This is the best short story collection I have ever read. Trust me she is a real find!'
'⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'A skilled writer who immerses us seamlessly in the lives of her characters.'
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'I have now read every word Claire Keegan has written. That's how much I love her writing.'
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'With her keen eye and lucid prose, Keegan beguiles, jolts and haunts us beyond the pages.'
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 'The writing is both tender, poetic and authentic ... the stories stay with you long after you have finished reading.'
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The chill reaches to the bones of this debut collection of 15 stories by Keegan, an acclaimed young Irish writer whose precisely articulated, clear prose illuminates her native land. In Keegan's Ireland, it is eternally winter, and familial relations provide neither appeasing warmth nor protection. Her mostly female narrators dwell on the cusp of self-knowledge; they have ruefully observed the example set by their mothers, aunts and grandmothers "flat-bellied, temperamental women who've given up and call it happiness" and are slowly feeling out new possibilities for their own lives. Rebellions range from the small and symbolic (a mother takes the wheel of a car and leaves her husband stranded) to the wider-reaching (a woman decides to keeps her illegitimate child). Such victories cannot keep the harshness of the world at bay and are of little help, for example, to the couple whose daughter is kidnapped. Yet Keegan depicts the ascendance of a generation of women who "can butt in and take over, rescue and be rescued" in an Ireland on the verge of a self-generated wave of feminism. The setting of several stories in the U.S. (where Keegan did her undergraduate work) is indicated only by a smattering of details such as baseball hats and fast food; they might as well, and with greater effect, have been set in Ireland. While Keegan's imagery occasionally bears the clear brand of the M.F.A. program, these moments are few and are outweighed by the restraint with which she deploys such imagery, and by her stern refusal to fall back on anything that might resemble a happy ending.
