I’ve been wanting to read more Keegan, and when I found this newish issue of her first story collection, I added it to the vacation pile. With the first story, I thought perhaps I had read this before, but it was just that first story (included in So Late in the Day) – all the others were new to me.
This collection reflects the spare and focused writing Keegan is known for, and the art of short story writing – stories that are both complete and only partial, with just enough to make the story work without backstory or sidebar distractions. Children are at the centre of most of these stories, and on the fringes of the others, and all have an element of malevolence or incipient violence, like quasi-horror stories. Keegan leaves the horror to the reader’s imagination but creates situations that could go either way. In several stories, misogyny and emancipation are the themes, as woman are presented with opportunities for choices and then confronted with or validated by the consequences, and men are painted in a near-ubiquitous bad light.
While I enjoyed a few of the stories here, none were as engaging, meaningful, or memorable as Foster or Small Things Like These. Perhaps those later stories represent a more mature storyteller. There are two more story collections from Keegan, which I’ll likely get to in time.
Fate: little book library
7 – debut
8 – female author
13 – somewhere I’ve never been
17 – place name
18 – short stories
20 – one word title
34 – prize winner
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