Antarctica – Claire Keegan

Stories with portentous momentum that carries them and their characters to sometimes startlingly inevitable endings. In what was her first publication, Keegan brings out the pain and longing, the understandable and questionable acts of human relationship in mature and unflinching exposure.

The writing is true and bright as ice. You can tell that she has edited like a butcher paring away the fat to leave the words clean cut and lean. The paragraph should “go into, not on about the subject,” she said once, the comment of one who knows her craft.
 
As a matter of course, a set of stories is often tied to a certain place and culture. What I found worked very well in these is, as we switch from rural Ireland to the American South—Keegan writes authoritatively on both—the stories refresh each other with alternating voices and expectations.