Rachel Reviews: Antarctica by Claire Keegan

My attention was first drawn to Claire Keegan when I watched a film based on her book "Small Things Like These". I was pulled into the quietness of the story, how we peered into the lives of ordinary people, observers to the tragedy and tensions there.

I wondered if her fiction was the same. I was not disappointed with what I found: Antarctica is in the same style entirely.

As a place to start reading Claire Keegan, this is a great introduction because it makes you want to explore more of her writing. Antarctica is a book of short stories and its content spans a whole host of characters and situations. Mainly set in Ireland and America, worlds are opened up to us to nose into, from marriages to new dates to affairs to deaths.

The opener, Antarctica, tells of a woman keen to leave her mundane life behind, just for a night or two and to be someone else while she is still attractive enough. Unfortunately, this experience does not go entirely to plan and what was meant to be a temporary selfish indulgence becomes something much more sinister.

The stories are dark, the dark element is, in my opinion, the hallmark of a good short story: there must be a twist in the tale. And this is true of these stories. Like the master Roald Dahl, Keegan takes the reader somewhere unexpected and these places are shadowy and black in nature, only some are more shadowy and black than others.

However, there is variety within the darkness. There are real-life references made, like in The Singing Cashier where a sister realises that she may have inadvertently been putting her little sister in danger every time she sent her to the shops. There are stories that will make your skin crawl like Burns which seems to be about a family making a new start from a foe close to home but Keegan is leading you to this only to surprise you with something completely different and unexpected. Ugh.

And that's what her stories did for me each time. They surprised me, every one, and that is testament to the strength of her writing, that I became absorbed in the characters, the action, the scene setting to such an extent that I was not second guessing where Keegan was taking me - I was completely in thrall and merely followed where she led, like a poor, powerless (but happy) dupe.

I would thoroughly recommend.

Rachel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars!