Summary
"Well I was, but I had no books," explains Claire Keegan in answer to my question as to whether she was an avid reader as a child. "And who knows, maybe that was a good thing because it put a longing on me for books. It really did."
The author of two short story collections - Antarctic and Walk the Blue Fields - and a new "long short story", Foster, Keegan is an exceptional writer. Her work is sparse and yet packed with emotional power; it resonates like poetry and is disarming in its intensity, a characteristic that describes Keegan in person too. In conversation, Keegan is considered, the pauses between questions and answers are cavernous, the precision of her language - perhaps the defining feature of her prose - apparent as she picks through questions and constructs her answers.See the full content of this document
Extract
'A Child's Senses Are Not Dulled by Experience'
The youngest of a large Catholic family, Keegan grew up in Wicklow. Since there were no books in the house, apart from "the odd Mills & Boon floating in" and the library at her high school was perversely kept behind glass and therefore out of reach, her memories of the few books she could get her hands on are vivid.
"There was a travelling library but it came into the ...See the full content of this document
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