Keegan has written just four books in 22 years, all of them, says The Guardian, are ‘small, sharp and brilliant’. Brief but powerful is how Keegan rolls. The author says of her style: ‘What pleases me is brevity.’ She uses very few words to say a vast amount, which is vanishingly rare in this indulgent and unedited age.
Foster, her third book, began as a short story in The New Yorker in 2010 and was expanded and published later that year as a novella. Evocative, lyrical and beautiful, it examines the ways we flawed humans express love to one another.
It is the summer holidays in 1980s rural Ireland and a little girl is dropped off by her taciturn father to stay with relations while her mother has yet another baby in the chaotic family home.
Everything at the relatives’ house is clean, orderly, soft and generous. Freshly baked rhubarb tart, milk in an enamel jug, a deep, hot, extravagant bath are just a few examples of the delicious welcome the girl receives, their homely comfort representing a life she’s never known.
As the summer unfolds and she familiarises herself with her loving carers and their past, her world changes for good. Embedded now in their peaceful rhythm, will she find her place within her own family again when the time comes?
To read this heart-breaking tale is to journey through the complexities of all human emotion. Sure, the typically economic writing and plot – Keegan is no fan of plot – leave us with questions but time spent pondering them is a wonderful antidote to the pain of having finished the book.
Keegan can barely write a word without being wreathed in awards. Her first short-story collection, Antarctica, won the Rooney prize for Irish literature. Her most recent book, Small Things Like These, which is also a pleasure from start to finish, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Meanwhile, Foster won the Davy Byrnes Award in 2009 and was selected last year as one of the top 50 works of fiction written this century. If you can’t stretch to reading the book – which would be rather feeble as it is only 88 pages long – don’t miss the very faithful film adaptation, An Cailin Ciuin. Available to view on Amazon Prime, it was nominated for an Oscar for Best International Feature Film.
There are just two downsides to Claire Keegan. One is that she doesn’t publish longer works; the other is that she doesn’t publish more often.
By Becky Ladenburg
March 2023
