This is the second book of Keegan's in her series of five I'm reading, and doing it in time sequence to get a feel of the development of her writing, and is another collection of short stories, which seems to be her genre.
She must've started her "serious" creative fiction writing when in about her mid 20's best I can work out, but I have to say it's like she simply arrived with her talent at full perk and hit the ground running, because this one is just as good as the first.
She has a capacity to find great ways of describing small detail, in people and landscape, such as one gem in this book, introducing the main character to us as "...a bold spear of a woman...". Geez I wish I could come up with that sort of thing a little more often!
Once again, this is the lives of ordinary people, and some not so ordinary, but even with these you get the feeling that they would see themselves as ordinary. It's a collection of only 8 stories, mainly set in Ireland, and averaging about 7k words. But some of them, again, fairly long for a short story at well over 10k words. Two of her later long stories have been made into movies, being the next two in the sequence, but no idea if she set out with this in mind or it's simply been a great spin-off from good writing.
Okay, "FOSTER" next, stay tuned....
Cheers....
T.R.E.
ps - re-brained PC humming like total contentment !! Ahhhh - bliss !!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>