Walk the Blue Fields, Paperback/Claire Keegan

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 Boll 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. A masterful portrait of a country wrestling with its past and of individuals eking out their futures, ``Walk the Blue Fields`` is a breathtaking collection from one of Ireland s greatest talents, and a resounding articulation of all the yearnings of the human heart.