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A review by gorecki
Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan
4.0
While reading Claire Keegan’s Walk the Blue Fields, I couldn’t help but think that this is a book about loneliness. Correction: about being alone. Not all of the characters in it are actually lonely. Some have just found solace in their solitude.
In “A Long and Painful Death” the desired peace and quiet of a writer lodging in a house on an island is disturbed by an angry German, who breaks her writer’s block. “The Parting Gift” tells the story of a young woman who looks forward to disconnecting herself from her past and placing an ocean between herself and her family. “Walk the Blue Fields” and “Dark Horses” both tell the stories of a men finding peace after pushing away the women they’ve loved, and while “Surrender” deals with pretty much the same, it ends with a strongly expressed look into an alternative solution for the future. And for contrast, “The Forester’s Daughter” and “Night of The Quicken Trees” (the latter a stark tale full of folk elements, legends, and witchcraft beliefs) deal with experiencing loneliness while being among others, and the desire to break out of it.
Walk the Blue Fields is a quiet book. One you should read in a quiet room next to a window. It’s not going to shock you or bring any excessive and strong emotions. In its poetic and subtle language it will tell you tales of quiet solitude. Read these tales when you want to experience someone else’s loneliness without being alone.
In “A Long and Painful Death” the desired peace and quiet of a writer lodging in a house on an island is disturbed by an angry German, who breaks her writer’s block. “The Parting Gift” tells the story of a young woman who looks forward to disconnecting herself from her past and placing an ocean between herself and her family. “Walk the Blue Fields” and “Dark Horses” both tell the stories of a men finding peace after pushing away the women they’ve loved, and while “Surrender” deals with pretty much the same, it ends with a strongly expressed look into an alternative solution for the future. And for contrast, “The Forester’s Daughter” and “Night of The Quicken Trees” (the latter a stark tale full of folk elements, legends, and witchcraft beliefs) deal with experiencing loneliness while being among others, and the desire to break out of it.
Walk the Blue Fields is a quiet book. One you should read in a quiet room next to a window. It’s not going to shock you or bring any excessive and strong emotions. In its poetic and subtle language it will tell you tales of quiet solitude. Read these tales when you want to experience someone else’s loneliness without being alone.