I have recently fallen in love with Claire Keegan’s short stories! This collection contains her earliest published works. Some of the stories are strange and leave me wondering what the point of such grotesqueness was. More than once, I flipped back through the story to skim it again so that I can understand the action better. Consistently, stories have a twist at the very end that makes each word of an entire meandering piece come together in perfect sense.
Some stories are gothic in that their absurdity drives their appeal. Often, each tale contains an element of dark horror, too. These carefully crafted stories are not for the feint of heart. No haunting topic is skipped: Murder, suicide, abuse, and affairs are all covered here. They’re ripe for entertainment about a scary world.
I prefer her recent work Small Things Like These for a more serious subject, but this collection shares all the narrative twists endemic throughout her work. It’s no surprise, 25 years after her debut, that Keegan’s work is well-read the world over!
Antarctica
By Claire Keegan
Copyright (c) 1999
Grove Press
ISBN13 9780802139016
Page Count: 207
Genre: Short Stories
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