Today I'm writing about Irish author Claire Keegan and the books she writes. This week she has exploded within me! Perhaps you already know Keegan and her work. If so, you are a step ahead of me. I've just met her through her writing and through the Radio New Zealand interview I heard last Saturday morning. I've already: read the first short story in the collection, So late in the day; read her short novel Small things like These (shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize); listened to Foster, an hour long novel adroitly read by Aoife McMahon. Who is she?Wikipedia lists these Keegan achievements: Keegan has won the inaugural William Trevor Prize,[13] the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature,[13] the Olive Cook Award and the Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award 2009.[13] Other awards include the Hugh Leonard Bursary, the Macaulay Fellowship,[13] the Martin Healy Prize, the Kilkenny Prize, and the Tom Gallon Award. She was also a 2002 Wingate Scholar and a two-time recipient of the Francis MacManus Award. She was a visiting professor at Villanova University in 2008. Keegan was the Ireland Fund Artist-in-Residence in the Celtic Studies Department of St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto in March 2009.[14] In 2019, she was appointed as Writing Fellow at Trinity College Dublin.[15] Pembroke College Cambridge and Trinity College Dublin selected Keegan as the 2021 Briena Staunton Visiting Fellow.[16]. Impressive list isn't it? And I haven't completed it . To see more, just click the blue text. Small things like these - the backgroundI found myself quite taken aback by Keegan's writing. It is sparse but pungent. To illustrate that, I want to talk about and then quote from Small Things like These. The story, set in Ireland is about Bill, a coal merchant, a married man with five daughters who in the course of his daily work supplies coal to what is known to history as a Magdalene Laundry. These were institutions run by nuns for girls and young women unwanted for some reason by their parents. The girls were supposed to be looked after but in fact they were exploited. They were locked in and made to wash laundry for long hours per day and were generally treated badly. Many of them, and their babies, died. The laundry was often done for state institutions such as prisons, hospitals and government departments. Please click into this video of several survivors of talking about their lives. The nub of the storyBill Furlong, delivering coal to one of these places found a girl cold and sick, locked in the coal house and took her to the mother of the house, but suspected that what he saw as the girl was then fussed over and well treated, was a show. So on Christmas Eve he went back to the coal house, found the girl there, much as she was previously, and simply took her home. Here's a key piece of text: ‘As they carried on along and met more people Furlong did and did not know, he found himself asking was there any point in being alive without helping one another? Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror? ‘How light and tall he almost felt walking along with this girl at his side and some fresh, new, unrecognisable joy in his heart. Was it possible that the best bit of him was shining forth, and surfacing? Some part of him, whatever it could be called – was there any name for it? – was going wild, he knew. The fact was that he would pay for it but never once in his whole unremarkable life had he known a happiness akin to this, not even when his infant girls were first placed in his arms and he heard their healthy, obstinate cries.’ Pages 113-14 ReadingI hope you might read the story about Bill Furlong. His character is built up with lots of detail and the ending is not what you might expect. Maybe you might also read the other books, especially Foster, as well as some of the short stories. You may find, as I did, that Claire Keegan’s writing explodes within you. ExtraPerhaps you'd like to see the Taoiseach's (prime minister's) apology to the Magdalene women. That Enda Kelly felt the need to give it emphasises the magnitude of the 200 year long Magdalene laundry scandal. □ John McInnes Friday 5 April 2024 Publication details: Foster by Claire Keegan, Faber & Faber, originally 2010 So late in the day by Claire Keegan, Faber & Faber 2023 Small Things like These by Claire Keegan, Grove Press 2021 ##########
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