Happy to have finally read this, it’s always a pleasure to sit down with a book like this.
For such a short book I feel like it’s a slow burn?! Or maybe it’s just Keegan’s masterful prose of “show, don’t tell”. There’s a warm subtlety of feeling that diffuses the book.
I feel like Keegan really transports us into that sunny kitchen in the opening scenes, and she never lets us go until the end. A delicious yet elegiac read you won’t want to put down. A portrait of girlhood and rural Ireland that seems to ring true.
In terms of the story, it’s simple: a girl is sent to live in the country with an older couple, (distantly related?).
Entering the young protagonist’s mind, you see her slowly build up her internal sense of peace. There’s no heavy-handed analysis though, just vignettes, snapshots, and impressions. It really feels like how the world unfolds to you as a child.
I love that things are left unsaid.
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