Walk the Blue Fields

From the author of Foster and the Booker Prize shortlisted Small Things Like These. 'Perfect short stories.' Anne Enright 'Breath-taking.' Irish Times 'Her stories are as good as Chekhov.' David Mitchell A writer alone at a retreat is faced with an unwelcome visitor. A priest seeks solace from a romantic memory. A farmhand regrets losing the finest woman in town. In this remarkable collection of stories, Claire Keegan observes an Ireland wrestling with its past.

From the author of Foster and the Booker Prize shortlisted Small Things Like These. 'Perfect short stories.' Anne Enright 'Breath-taking.' Irish Times 'Her stories are as good as Chekhov.' David Mitchell A writer alone at a retreat is faced with an unwelcome visitor. A priest seeks solace from a romantic memory. A farmhand regrets losing the finest woman in town. In this remarkable collection of stories, Claire Keegan observes an Ireland wrestling with its past.

AN IRISH TIMES TOP 100 IRISH BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY 'Exquisite . so intricately wrought, so strange and beguiling as to entirely bewitch.' GUARDIAN 'Pure magic.' COLM TÓIBÍN 'Lyrical, thoughtful, but with a thick, dark strain of melancholy running through.' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY A long-haired woman moves into the priest's house and sets fire to his furniture. That Christmas, the electricity goes out. A forester mortgages his land and goes off to a seaside town looking for a wife. He finds a woman eating alone in the hotel. A farmer wakes half-naked and realises the money is almost gone. And in the title story, a priest waits on the altar for a bride and battles, all that wedding day, with his memories of a love affair. In her long-awaited second collection, Claire Keegan observes an Ireland wrestling with its past.

AN IRISH TIMES TOP 100 IRISH BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY 'Exquisite . so intricately wrought, so strange and beguiling as to entirely bewitch.' GUARDIAN 'Pure magic.' COLM TÓIBÍN 'Lyrical, thoughtful, but with a thick, dark strain of melancholy running through.' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY A long-haired woman moves into the priest's house and sets fire to his furniture. That Christmas, the electricity goes out. A forester mortgages his land and goes off to a seaside town looking for a wife. He finds a woman eating alone in the hotel. A farmer wakes half-naked and realises the money is almost gone. And in the title story, a priest waits on the altar for a bride and battles, all that wedding day, with his memories of a love affair. In her long-awaited second collection, Claire Keegan observes an Ireland wrestling with its past.