Reading time: About 1 minute
I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about metaphors from Claire Keegan….
Claire Keegan is an Irish writer known for her short stories, which have been published in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, Granta, and The Paris Review. In 2023 she was named “Author of the Year” in conjunction with the Irish Book Awards.
I discovered Keegan by happy accident. My husband had picked up her short novel — Small Things Like These — at the library, and he recommended it to me.
The book tells the story of a small Irish family in a small Irish town, during the weeks leading up to Christmas in 1985. The plainspoken beauty of Keegan’s language struck me immediately, as did her deft understanding of emotions beneath the surface. Her writing style reminded me a little of Elizabeth Strout‘s.
Keegan also has a poetic eye for figurative language. Here are my favourite examples:
- In the town of New Ross, chimneys threw out smoke which fell away and drifted off in hairy, drawn-out strings before dispersing along the quays, and soon the River Barrow, dark as stout, swelled up with rain.
- And then the nights came on and the frosts took hold again, and blades of cold slid under doors and cut the knees off those who still knelt to say the rosary.
- The crowd made soft little splashes of applause.
- [Some of the birds inspecting the grounds put] Furlong in mind of the young curate who liked to walk about town with his hand behind his back.
- Sleepily, he climbed out and looked over the yews and hedges, the grotto with its statue of Our Lady, whose eyes were downcast as though she was disappointed by the artificial flowers at her feet.
