Looking for more to read by Claire Keegan, I came across this collection of short stories written in the late 1990s.
In the title story, a happily married woman decides to try a one-night stand, with disastrous results.
In “Men and Women” a girl still young enough to believe in Santa gains some insight into her parents’ relationship.
“Where the Water’s Deepest” contrasts the care an au pair has for a boy with her employer’s disdain of her.
“Love in the Tall Grass” tells what happens after Cordelia’s married lover asks her to wait for him for ten years.
“Storms” is about a young girl’s memories of her mother, who has been put away in an asylum.
These are summaries of the first few stories, but there are several others. Many of them are about the mistreatment of women by their partners. Keegan’s writing is always beautifully lucid and her stories contemplative.
What? Me Read? 
Yes, I will get this one as well, even though the titular story appears in her new collection that’s coming out in November with the new story “So Late in the Day”.
That’s interesting.
Way late to the party, but… I felt something else going on with the au pair and the family. She seemed enormously attached to the little boy… I wondered if she was the child’s bio mom. Just a thought, especially after reading about the dad’s kiss and “the arrangement” that “his mama” be the one to put him to bed every night.
I think that’s very unlikely. I think they were unheeding parents, and I don’t think it’s improbable that someone caring for a child could get attached to him.
Anyway, I reviews this way back in September, which means I read it sometime like August or July, so I don’t remember the details very well, but I didn’t have any sense of something like that going on.
I mean reviewed.