Walk the Blue Fields
Ireland

Walk the Blue Fields

by Claire Keegan

Love & Passion Literary Fiction Classics 2007

Summary

In this collection of short stories, Claire Keegan explores the hidden tensions beneath ordinary lives in rural Ireland. In the title story, a Catholic priest stands at the altar on a wedding day, haunted by memories of a love affair that continues to challenge his faith and his sense of duty. Elsewhere, a writer seeking solitude finds her retreat disrupted by an unwelcome visitor, while farmers, lovers, and families confront disappointments and desires they struggle to articulate.

Keegan’s characters often find themselves caught between the lives they have chosen and the lives they secretly wish they could lead. Their private longings unfold against a changing Ireland, where tradition, religion, and social expectations exert a powerful influence. With spare, precise prose, she reveals the emotional weight hidden in everyday gestures and conversations. Walk the Blue Fields is a quietly penetrating collection about love, regret, faith, and the compromises people make in the hope of finding happiness.

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About the author
Claire Keegan
Claire Keegan

Claire Keegan is an acclaimed Irish writer born in 1968 who grew up on a farm near the border of County Wicklow and County Wexford. She studied English and Political Science at Loyola University in New Orleans before completing postgraduate studies in creative writing at the University of Wales and Trinity College Dublin. Known for her meticulous prose and emotionally powerful short fiction, she published her debut collection, Antarctica, in 1999, followed by Walk the Blue Fields (2007) and the novella Foster (2010). Her later novella, Small Things Like These (2021), was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. Keegan’s work has been translated into more than thirty languages, earning her international recognition for exploring the moral complexities of ordinary lives. She is widely regarded as one of Ireland’s most accomplished contemporary literary voices.

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Details
Published
2007
Author
Claire Keegan