Antarctica by Claire Keegan: short story collection review
Antarctica’s trouble is that the first two stories are just too strong to prevent inevitable disappointment as the collection continues. No stories after these are ever as vital and emotionally present. That doesn’t mean there weren’t any that were good or entertaining, but it’s hard to reach such a high from the jump. This is more a fault of sequencing than with the collection itself. Many collections only manage a small handful of truly great short stories—Colin Barrett maintains that's all you need for a collection to be good. But I was always hoping the best was yet to come, and slowly lost my will to continue as I progressed. Particularly, these early stories stand out as they showcase the opposite poles of Keegan at her best. “Antarctica,” the title story, stands apart from Keegan's best known work (think Foster ) and many of her short stories in general because it departs from the focus on rural lives and children as protagonists. Instead, this story features a disillusi...
