Joanna Presents Claire Keegan

Jacquie's Email Dearest Literary Ladies: a gentle reminder that we will be meeting this Wednesday, February 14th to hear Joanna present on her birth year's theme, “1965–1966 Modern Irish Literature: Claire Keegan.” Lori will be hosting our not lunch, starting at noon, and our meeting will begin promptly at 1 PM.

Good luck with the snow. Until then, x Jacquie

Christine's Minutes It was Saint Valentine’s Day when twelve members of the Literature Club met at Lori’s home, where we enjoyed a spread of Irish delicacies provided by Jacquie. Jacquie later explained that it was after chopping many vegetables and potatoes to make a rather bland soup that she experienced an insight into the nature of Irish literature: she needed a drink.

Constance rang the bell at 1 PM sharp.

The minutes were read and accepted, with couple of minor corrections.

Lori announced, to great fanfare, that–our check for the books in honor of Helen Barolini having been delivered to the library–our treasury now contains $118.73.

Born in 1965, our presenter Joanna Riesman had two possible topics to choose from: “Letters in Literature 1964–1965” and “Modern Irish Literature 1965–1966.” Noting that Brian (Bree’n) Moore was included in the Irish Literature year, she was excited to revisit him, particularly as he had been a very good friend of her uncle William Weintraub, and that her uncle had a very extensive correspondence with Moore.

Claire Keegan

However, Brian Moore wrote a whole lot of books, on various topics and in various styles, and some of them–it must be said–Joanna found to be a bit of a slog. So, the pivot. From a dead prolific writer, Joanna turned to Claire Keegan, a living Irish writer who has written very few books, and those books tend to be short. Her story collections are: Antarctica (1999), Walk the Blue Fields (2007); The Forester’s Daughter (2019); So Late in the Day (2023), and the novellas are: Small Things Like These (2021), and Foster (2010). Even her Wiki biography is a mere two paragraphs. And yet she already has a huge reputation in Ireland, and her work is staple of school curricula. Novelists such as David Mitchell, Hilary Mantel and Colm Tóibín are quasi-reverent in their praise for her writing.

Keegan was born in 1968 into a large family, with few books. She was 17 when she left home for New Orleans, where she went to Loyola College. When she returned to Ireland she taught school in the countryside. Eight years elapsed between her first collection, Antarctica, and her next, Walk the Blue Fields. She has said that her stories are often sparked by a single image, such as a bucket, for the novella, Foster.

As Joanna pointed out, the advantage of having such a compact body of work is that we can read about and read a “non-insubstantial percentage” of her work.

Members read an interview with Keegan from The Manchester Guardian, in which she spoke about Foster. That book, Foster, was made into a movie, The Quiet Girl. It was nominated in 2023 for Best International Feature Film. In 2022, her novella, Small Things Like These, was shortlisted for the Booker, the shortest work ever listed.

Her most recent work, So Late in the Day, was chosen by George Saunders for The New Yorker fiction podcast, with Deborah Triesman. In their review of that work, The Washington Post said: “Keegan illuminates violence better than almost anyone…She connects the violence of the past to that of the present, and domestic violence to state violence….The whole country is like a small town, obsessed with minor scandals while major ones go unheralded and unpunished.”

Members read the story “Men and Women,” brilliantly told from the perspective of a child, a story in which the opening of a rural gate can carry enormous significance. We also read the first half of “Small Things Like These,” a story so gripping that a non-insubstantial percentage of the members went home and immediately read the second half.

Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner
Recording Secretary