Collection proves a bittersweet read

Essays and Fiction: The Opposite of Loneliness. By Marina Keegan. Simon and Schuster, €12.

Marina Keegan: killed in a car accident at 22

Marina Keegan had it all. A literary whizz-kid, she was smart, pretty, bubbly and ambitious. At 22, she was a student at Yale university and was about to begin a job at the New Yorker. She had a loving boyfriend and was well liked by her peers and her professors

But at 22, Keegan died in a car accident when her boyfriend fell asleep at the wheel (and survived unhurt), just five days ...