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First, a confession ("bless me father, for…"): My bookshelves are
devoid of contemporary Irish short fiction. There are plenty of classics --- O'Connor,
O'Flaherty, O'Faolain, Joyce, McGahern et al. --- and a decent presence of contemporary
novelists --- Dermot Bolger, Patrick McCabe, Robert McLiam Wilson, John Banville. But when
it comes to Irish short fiction, I'm sad to say that bell bottoms were still in fashion
(the first time around) when my most cutting-edge story was penned. Shameful, really. So,
I was thrilled when my editor invited me to review ANTARCTICA, the debut collection of
Ireland's Claire Keegan.
From its very first line ("Every time the happily married woman went away, she
wondered how it would feel to sleep with another man") I could tell that ANTARCTICA
was not my grandfather's short story collection. It appeared at first almost uniformly
bleak, with the "Antarctica" of the title a desolate, lonely and terrible place
of the soul, inhabited by the wretched and the damned. In the title story, a woman goes to
the city on a quixotic quest for adventure, only to end up handcuffed to a bed with no
apparent prospects for escape. In "Passport Soup" the mother of a disappeared
child, deranged by anger and grief, serves a horrifying concoction to her despondent,
guilt-ridden husband. Elsewhere, a reconstituted family struggles to come to terms with
the horrors perpetrated by the original mother and wife. I was initially hard pressed to
read more than one story per sitting and found myself reaching for BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY
to dress my psychic wounds.
But like its continental namesake, Keegan's ANTARCTICA rewards those who persevere with
unexpected visions of haunting beauty and surprising vitality. Under scrutiny, her
inhabitants emerge as far from wretched --- behind scarred and gnarled exteriors live
richly drawn characters who struggle against all odds to imbue life with meaning, joy, and
love. They occasionally triumph, more often fail, and most often just muddle through. They
are complex, flawed, riddled with contradiction. They are, in a word, gloriously,
tragically, and eminently human. And they populate a collection that works on three
different levels. First, ANTARCTICA showcases Keegan's ample skill and versatility at
offering stories in first, third, even second person and featuring characters from a range
of circumstances, in a range of settings. Second, it bears witness to the universal human
struggle to carve out a meaningful existence in an indifferent, and at times, openly
hostile world. Third, it chronicles Keegan's personal journey from childhood on a Wicklow
farm through youthful study and adventure in Wales and Louisiana to adult citizenship in
modern Ireland --- an "Emerald Tiger" with a cutting-edge economy, woman
President, and legalized divorce. ANTARCTICA is a rare collection by a rare talent.
The most striking features of Keegan's stories are the tone, setting, female characters,
and composition. The tone is matter-of-fact and completely devoid of irony. Unusual for an
Irish writer, but surprisingly refreshing. Irony creates emotional distance, and its
absence allowed me to connect powerfully with Keegan's compelling cast of characters. Not
always a comfortable experience, mind you, particularly in the searing stories mentioned
above; but for the yield of an unusually engaging read, well worth the discomfort (but
keep BRIDGET JONES at hand, just in case).
The setting alternates between Ireland and the American South. I initially found this
transatlantic shuttling jarring, but warmed to it as Keegan's skill at conjuring the
unique sites, sounds, and smells of the respective landscapes became evident. By the end,
I actually welcomed the shifts of scenery as a universalizing force that kept the
collection from being too easily pigeonholed as uniquely and peculiarly "Irish."
Keegan's female characters, many of them middle class, are powerfully realized.
Three-dimensional middle class women are about as rare in Irish fiction as happy families,
and Keegan's cast of characters is a welcome and overdue contribution to the canon.
Finally, Keegan's composition is simply breathtaking, and I find myself grasping for
analogs beyond the realm of writing. Like a painter or choreographer, Keegan composes
tableaux with layer upon layer of meaning. She sketches an outline, introduces colors,
props, scenery, and characters, moves them about, nudges them here and there, and
imperceptibly assembles them into a single iconic and climactic image. Once assembled, the
image lingers in the mind's eye as the story concludes, leaving the reader to ponder,
dissect, analyze, and speculate. In addition to the images that close the aforementioned
"Antarctica" and "Passport Soup," Keegan gives us a family ferociously
and cathartically assaulting an invasion of bugs; a woman, her husband, and his former
lover on a beach, side-by-side in total silence, as the sun signals the close of one year
and the birth of another; a young man emerging from the ocean in the black of night to
face the next phase of his life; and a long-suffering woman seizing the wheel for the
first time to slowly drive away from an abusive husband. All short story writers
approximate this process in one way or another --- "an image is worth a thousand
words," as the cliché goes --- but Claire Keegan, even in her debut collection,
demonstrates an aptitude well beyond her years.
Reading ANTARCTICA, I felt like an active collaborator in a journey of the mind. Each
story proved to be an aerobic, gymnastic exercise that left me simultaneously spent and
hungry for more. To be sure, Claire Keegan made me work. But I love her for it. And upon
reaching the final phrase of the final story I found myself looking forward to the novel
that her bio assures us she's writing. I can't ask for much more from a collection of
stories and I wholeheartedly recommend ANTARCTICA to all lovers of substantial short
fiction.
--- Reviewed by Robin O'Brien
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