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    Foster
    Foster
    Foster
    Ebook70 pages1 hour

    Foster

    By Claire Keegan

    4.5/5

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    • Family

    • Rural Life

    • Change

    • Coming of Age

    • Friendship

    • Fish Out of Water

    • Small Town Life

    • Rural Setting

    • Mentorship

    • Found Family

    • Wise Mentor

    • Absent Father

    • Orphan

    • Star-Crossed Lovers

    • Rags to Riches

    • Self-Discovery

    • Community

    • Responsibility

    • Relationships

    • Love

    About this ebook

    An international bestseller and one of The Times’ “Top 50 Novels Published in the 21st Century,” Claire Keegan’s piercing contemporary classic Foster is a heartbreaking story of childhood, loss, and love; now released as a standalone book for the first time ever in the US

    It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas’ house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household—where everything is so well tended to—and this summer must soon come to an end.

    Winner of the prestigious Davy Byrnes Award and published in an abridged version in the New Yorker, this internationally bestselling contemporary classic is now available for the first time in the US in a full, standalone edition. A story of astonishing emotional depth, Foster showcases Claire Keegan’s great talent and secures her reputation as one of our most important storytellers.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGrove Press
    Release dateNov 1, 2022
    ISBN9780802160157

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    Reviews for Foster

    4.5/5

    81 ratings5 reviews

    What our readers think

    Readers find this title to be beautifully written, subtle, understated, and elegant. The author has a fine ear for dialogue and uses the mundane details of life to convey deeper meanings. The book deals with pain and how it changes people, expressed and felt differently by each person. The final line of the book pulls everything together and leaves interpretation to the reader. Overall, readers really enjoyed this unique and thought-provoking title.

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      The story is both heartwarming and spare. I was completely engaged by this short, beautifully written story.
      It is a quick, emotional read by an author recommended by a friend. I look forward to reading more by Claire Keegan.
    • 5/5
      An absolutely stunning short story . Get the tissues ready.
    • 5/5
      Beatifully written. I may come back to it some time later for a second read.
    • 5/5
      nice book, really recommend the book... you gonna love it.
    • 5/5
      Subtle, understated, very fine ear for dialogue. Says more via what is unspoken than what is said out right. Deals with pain and how it changes Us and how differently it is expressed and felt in each person. Uses the mundane details of life to convey much deeper meanings; shows rather than tells. Elegant, spare, beautiful, and different. I really enjoyed it. As with many poems the final line is what pulls everything together, changes or underscores the meaning of what has gone before, leaving some of the work of interpretation to the reader. I will be reading everything else this gifted author provides. Chekov is mentioned on the book cover, but the style reminded me somewhat of William Faulkner's work.

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    Foster - Claire Keegan

    Cover.jpg

    FOSTER

    Also by Claire Keegan

    ANTARCTICA

    WALK THE BLUE FIELDS

    SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE

    FOSTER

    CLAIRE KEEGAN

    Grove Press

    New York

    Copyright © 2010, 2022 by Claire Keegan

    Jacket design by Gretchen Mergenthaler

    Jacket illustration © Liz Myhill

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [email protected].

    First published in the United Kingdom in 2010 by Faber & Faber Limited.

    Published simultaneously in Canada

    Printed in the United States of America

    First Grove Atlantic Hardcover edition: November 2022

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.

    ISBN 978-0-8021-6014-0

    eISBN 978-0-8021-6015-7

    Grove Press

    an imprint of Grove Atlantic

    154 West 14th Street

    New York, NY 10011

    Distributed by Publishers Group West

    groveatlantic.com

    For Ita Marcus

    and in memory of David Marcus

    1

    Early on a Sunday, after first Mass in Clonegal, my father, instead of taking me home, drives deep into Wexford towards the coast where my mother’s people came from. It is a hot day, bright, with patches of shade and greenish, sudden light along the road. We pass through the village of Shillelagh where my father lost our red Shorthorn in a game of forty-five, and on past the mart in Carnew where the man who won the heifer sold her shortly afterwards. My father throws his hat on the passenger seat, winds down the window, and smokes. I shake the plaits out of my hair and lie flat on the back seat, looking up through the rear window. In places there’s a bare, blue sky. In places the blue is chalked over with clouds, but mostly it is a heady mixture of sky and trees scratched over by ESB wires across which, every now and then, small, brownish flocks of vanishing birds race.

    I wonder what it will be like, this place belonging to the Kinsellas. I see a tall woman standing over me, making me drink milk still hot from the cow. I see another, less likely version of her in an apron, pouring pancake batter onto a frying pan, asking would I like another, the way my mother sometimes does when she is in good humour. The man will be no taller than her. He will take me to town on the tractor and buy me red lemonade and crisps. Or he’ll make me clean out sheds and pick stones and pull ragweed and docks out of the fields. I see him taking what I hope will be a fifty pence piece from his pocket but it turns out to be a handkerchief. I wonder if they live in an old farmhouse or a new bungalow, whether they will have an outhouse or an indoor bathroom with a toilet and running water. I picture myself lying in a dark bedroom with other girls, saying things we won’t repeat when morning comes.

    An age, it seems, passes before the car slows and turns into a tarred, narrow lane, then a thrill as the wheels slam over the metal bars of a cattle grid. On either side, thick hedges are trimmed square. At the end of the lane there’s a long, white house with trees whose limbs are trailing the ground.

    ‘Da,’ I say. ‘The trees.’

    ‘What about ’em?’

    ‘They’re sick,’ I say.

    ‘They’re weeping willows,’ he says, and clears his throat.

    In the yard, tall, shiny panes reflect our coming. I see myself looking out from the back seat wild as a gypsy child with my hair all loose but my father, at the wheel, looks just like my father. A big, loose hound whose coat is littered with the shadows of the trees lets out a few rough, half-hearted barks, then sits on the step and looks back at the doorway where the man has come out to stand. He has a square body like the men my sisters sometimes draw, but his eyebrows are white, to match his hair. He looks nothing like my mother’s people, who are all tall with long arms, and I wonder if we have not come to the wrong house.

    ‘Dan,’ the man says, and tightens himself. ‘What way are you?’

    ‘John,’ Da says.

    They stand,

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