CHAPTER ONE
Keen imagines that the ancient Irish custom of hiring women to mourn at funerals has continued into the modern day, and follows the most famous keener in world, Maeve McNamara, during the height of her career. Told in a plural first-person point of view, this book follows the group of people who adore Maeve. Through watching Maeve perform mourning, this collective voice thinks about grief, fame, community, and what we can know about ourselves and others. When a protégé appears and asks Maeve to train her, ideas about race and gender—and ideas about who belongs to what communities, and the tradition of the art of lamentation—all begin to shift and swerve. A hybrid novel/ars poetica/autobiographical essay, Keen attempts to grapple with lineage and innovation, heritage, and what no longer serves us.
A piercing look at pop culture through the lens of an Irish myth come to life—this novel, just as its title suggests, keens for the world. A super sharp, compelling read.
—Erika T. Wurth
Erin Stalcup’s Keen arrives like a screaming coming across the sky, at once a warning, a map of mourning, an awakening, and an invitation to revival. Stalcup’s gorgeous supernova of a novel twines a punk sensibility with ancient modes of lyricism, its electric language making ample room for the shutter-speed pulse of our public lives and the slower burn of our daily private struggles. Most of all, it amplifies the voices of the unheard, the vulnerable, the still-grieving, all those silenced too soon, till under its spell our ears recalibrate themselves, newly attuned to endangered frequencies and songs, including perhaps our own.
—Tim Horvath
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CHAPTER SIX—ANTHONY BOURDAIN
The Tusculum Review Vol. 9, Spring 2013