Antarctica

Antarctica by Claire Keegan. Atlantic Monthly Press, 207 pp., $23.00. This book of short stories does not read like a debut work. Keegan writes confidently and with great insight and has produced a livewire collection that is alternatingly terrifying and endearing. Irish-born Keegan sets her stories in both Ireland and Louisiana and clearly knows both locales intimately, but her deft exploration of the emotional polar regions that separate people, intrinsic to even the most profound interactions, provides most of the book's particular intensity.

Asymmetrical power dynamics abound and drive the majority of the stories. Repeatedly, mothers and daughters, weakened and vulnerable men, and children and the elderly discover that savage inequalities and bitter ironies have seeped into the very fabric of their lives. In "Men and Women," an Irish mother and her daughter come to realize that reified gender roles have cheated them, and they take the first steps toward reclaiming power. Keegan returns again and again to power dynamics in which those in authority abuse their caretaker positions and to the legacy and implications of such abuse. Pervading the collection is the sense that isolation and icy gaps invade even the interstices between parent and children, husband and wife, and other supposed intimates.

Though such chilly dynamics are constantly in operation, Keegan allows some light (refracted and murky, but light nonetheless) to shine through Antarctica. Despite crushing loss and cruelty, Keegan's characters manage to persist, endure, and even laugh. The most extreme example of this is "Passport Soup," where a couple takes the first tentative steps away from utter despair after the kidnapping of their daughter; they do so by sharing an angry, fury-filled meal together. The world is no tropical vacation, and Keegan persuasively suggests that people need to keep each other warm somehow.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Antioch Review, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning