Yürüyüş yolumun üzerindeki meşe ağaçlarının arasındaki üvez ağacını fark edince aklıma ilk gelen “Üvez Ağaçlarının Gecesi” oldu. Yani bu kitaptan bir öykü. Kitabın bütünü, tüm öyküler o kadar iyi anlatılmış ki yine hayranlıkla kitabı kapattım. Özellikle “Su Kıyısında” öyküsü beni çok etkiledi. Suda boğulma tehlikesi atlatanın kıyıya çıkışını evrimle o kadar güzel bağdaştırmış ki, hem de tek cümleyle… The first two tales in this collection are among the finest short fiction I have read in several years, which includes the new tales in John McGahern’s posthumous New and Selected Stories. That’s how good Keegan can be. The remarkable title tale follows a priest on the day of a wedding . . . “Parting Gift,” which opens the book, is a gem of compactness. . . . Its centre of gravity resonates with such force that the story could easily stretch to a novel.” –Tom Adair, The Scotsman Seven perfect short stories” from the award-winning author of Antarctica—“a writer who is instinctively cherished and praised” ( The Guardian, UK).

The land, which is a source of wealth and spirituality, also epitomizes duty, heritage and binding roots that imprison the main characters in the jail of their own resignation. And so they live with a conflicted sense of belonging that is naturally paired with alienation, which doggedly morphs them into natural exiles in their native country.

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The best stories here are so textured and moving, so universal but utterly distinctive, that it’s easy to imagine readers savoring them many years from now. And to imagine critics, far in the future, deploying lofty new terms to explain what it is that makes Keegan’s fiction work.”—Maud Newton, The New York Times Book Review Women’s minds were made of glass: so clear and yet their thoughts broke easily, yielding to other glassy thoughts that were even harder. It was enough to attract a man and frighten him all at once. from - Surrender (after McGahern) With that said, the writing quality is impressively high and the prose in many of the stories fairly sings in the description of rural Irish life. Keegan’s] . . . collections have drawn comparisons to William Trevor and Anton Chekhov . . . [She] crafts stories out of small details and insight . . . like poetry. . . . Claire Keegan is the real deal.”—Keith Donohue, “You Must Read This” NPR.com

Claire Keegan…now gives us her best work yet. Small Things Like These is a short, wrenching, thoroughly brilliant novel mapping the path of one man’s conscience, its torment and vacillation between two courses of action. Either one bears a price…Spare and potent, this is a remarkable story.”— Minneapolis Star Tribune Keegan’s output is scarce and her stories are as spare as they are heartrending, whittled down to the essential. If she has published anything that isn’t perfect, I haven’t seen it… More than most books four times its size, Foster does several of the things we ask of great literature: It expands our world, diverting our attention outward, and it opens up our hearts and minds. This is a small book with a miraculously outsized impact.”— NPR Now you stand on the landing trying to remember happiness, a good day, an evening, a kind word.’ - from ’The Parting Gift’ On the edge of the road, a small, plump hen walked purposefully along, her head extended and her feet clambering over the stones. She was such a pretty hen, her plumage edged in white, as though she’d powdered herself before she’d stepped out of the house. She hopped down onto the grassy verge and, without looking left or right, raced across the road, then stopped, re-adjusted her wings, and made a clear line for the cliff. The woman watched how the hen kept her head down when she reached the edge and how, without a moment’s hesitation, she jumped over it. The woman stopped the car and walked to the spot from which the hen had flung herself. A part of her did not want to look over the cliff... The best collection of short stories by any Irish writer in recent years. These are strange, haunting, sometimes funny tales, utterly unique in their way of seeing life. I can’t remember the last time I felt such awe when reading the work of a new writer.” – The Weekurn:lcp:walkbluefields0000keeg_b1e2:epub:3728d8ca-cfc0-4ba7-951b-a3e71e306eda Foldoutcount 0 Identifier walkbluefields0000keeg_b1e2 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t41s54212 Invoice 1652 Isbn 9780571233069 Claire Keegan’s brilliant debut collection, Antarctica, was a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year, and earned her resounding accolades on both sides of the Atlantic. Now she has delivered her next, much-anticipated book, Walk the Blue Fields, an unforgettable array of quietly wrenching stories about despair and desire in the timeless world of modern-day Ireland. In the never-before-published story “The Long and Painful Death,” a writer awarded a stay to work in Heinrich Böll’s old cottage has her peace interrupted by an unwelcome intruder, whose ulterior motives only emerge as the night progresses. In the title story, a priest waits at the altar to perform a marriage and, during the ceremony and the festivities that follow, battles his memories of a love affair with the bride that led him to question all to which he has dedicated his life; later that night, he finds an unlikely answer in the magical healing powers of a seer. Sanırım porsuk ağacı gördüğüm zaman üçüncü okumamı da yapmış olacağım. Çünkü onun da adı kitapta geçmekte:) the trees are tall and here the wind is strangely human. A tender speech is combing through the willows. In a bare whisper, the elms lean.’