The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories by Marina Keegan.

The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories by Marina Keegan.

 

I picked up this book having seen it many a time displayed in bookshops, and by the urging of my mother. She hadn’t read it, heard of it, but when I mentioned the writer’s backstory she immediately insisted I picked it up. ‘It’ll make a change.’ And it certainly did.

This is the first book of short stories/essays that I have read straight through. At 208 pages (sans introduction) with quite large font and margins, this is a quick and mostly easy read. The stories are similar – a strained straight relationship and a protagonist that gets high are in almost every story. But the characters are all very individual. A 60-something year old lady who reads to a blind man, naked. A journalist working in the middle east; his story told through emails. The opening piece of fiction, ‘Cold Pastoral’, is a remarkable story examining aren’t-they-are –they relationships, the connection between the girlfriend and the ex, and most harrowingly, death itself.

The latter half of the book contains personal essays on all sorts of subjects, including her first car, whales and her life with Coeliac disease. Her writing is easy. Simple. Big words dropped here and there. I’m not sure if I am a fan, but then I am hard to please. I feel her characters are well developed and the plot lines are good. Each story brings a different mood, and that is what makes them fun to read in one go. Marina had a job lined up in the New Yorker before the accident, and it’s easy to see why journalism was the route she was heading. The prose is not pretty. It is informative, clear, and brimming with ideas. If it was a colour, it would be the mustard of the coat the author wears on the front cover.

 Marina Keegan’s death was an absolute tragedy and it haunts every page of the book. The title essay (and perhaps my least favourite of the collection), shows the reader Marina’s optimism and excitement for the future. ‘We are so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time.’ She died in a car crash just five days after graduating from Yale. Professor, mentor and friend Anne Fadiman writes the introduction to the story, and it made me cry.

My favourite pieces in the book of nine stories and nine essays are the short story ‘The Ingenue’ and the penultimate essay ‘The Art of Observation’. Even that title makes you want to read it, huh? It’s the story of her time in India and her coming to terms with, and enjoying, the attention from the locals. The photos of her taken as she walked down the street. The amazement at her pale skin. The Ingenue is, again, a story of a straining long-distance relationship. It is about how people aren’t always how you think they are, and that’s ok.

A line that particularly stuck out to me from the book is from the short story ‘Hail, Full of Grace’:

‘No one quite believed in God and no one quite didn’t’.

Overall, I would recommend this collection. The stories are good, the essays are fun and Marina Keegan was a noteworthy young lady. The success of her pieces is well deserved. I hope she would be happy with them.

3.5/5 stars.