Viewings, Alicia Byrne Keane's second collection, works through the many senses of its title: flats seen but not secured in a hostile Dublin rental market, the interior of a body read through scans and symptoms, and the cartography of an island off Galway that was never there. Health anxiety is both subject and method, a habit of scrutiny turned equally on memory, gender, and the limits of what can be verified.
Viewings is wry about this vigilance without disowning it, and the attention holds steady through waiting rooms, viewings, and long stretches in which nothing is confirmed. Refusing the consolation of an ending, Alicia Byrne Keane makes the interval a place to live.
ISBN 9781918628173
During a French summer exchange programme in the late 90s, Jean embarked on an inappropriate relationship with her professor. Decades later Jean, now in her forties, is invited back to Europe by said professor for his retirement party... sending Jean into an emotional crisis.
In a desperate frenzy of guilt and regret, she finds herself praying to Monica Lewinsky for forgiveness. To Jean's shock, Saint Monica appears, and together they delve back into those sunlit, sexually charged six weeks in France. Replete with Saint Monica's fiery insights into female martyrdom through the ages, this is a wise, funny, and wildly original examination of female desire, male power and the price women pay for giving in to their appetites.
ISBN 9781805467274