Starting with a short gourmet comparison: I'd rather have one exquisite chocolate or a bag of cheap, sugary candies. Undoubtedly enjoying superb chocolate doesn't last as long as the seemingly endless chewing of sweets, yet the quality of the experience is incomparable. This is the case with Claire Keegan's short novel "Foster."  It's easy to finish it in one sitting, but the experience is better than reading some 500+ pages of stories.

In a hot summer of 1981 in rural Ireland, a father takes his daughter to stay on a Wexton farm with distant relatives. The girl leaves her house, not knowing how long this arrangement will last; her mother is pregnant with yet another child, and her father, distant and cold, doesn't explain anything. This is not surprising that she isn't considered worthy of explanations: in her family, children are supposed to listen.

Her new family is different. A childless couple, John and Edna Kinsella, are not especially rich, although "there is plenty of food and money to spare," but most important, there is "room and time to think ." The girl helps Edna with everyday chores: weeding the garden, cleaning the house, and baking tarts. The Kinsellas listen to her and encourage reading, and when  John finds out that she is a good runner, he invents a playful game of running to the mailbox and recording her time. Edna bathes her and takes her shopping for clothes. The girl is shocked when on their walk on an uneven path, Mr. Kinsella takes her hand and slows down, so they walk together. Her father never did this; there was no reason to show children kindness and affection.

 The girl is told that there are no secrets in the house: where secrets exist, there is shame. Yet, she learns from a nosy neighbor that the Kinsellas experienced a terrible loss. That may be why they can appreciate even more how precious time is, and spending it with a girl eager to learn is so important.

It's challenging to write the coming of age stories with children as the narrators and avoid subconscious preaching while maintaining the world's view through a child's eyes, with its realism and poetry. Children depend on their parents very much and can't do much without their love. Without appreciation and encouragement, a child can't, using a biological comparison, change from a caterpillar to a butterfly. This metamorphosis happened to the little girl, and Claire Keegan described it beautifully. The summer brought the sun into the little girl's life, and the warmth of her foster parents allowed her to open her wings.

Foster (Audiobook)-
I read this in one day. What a lovely little story about a young girl taken in by relatives for the summer. It was beautifully written, I could feel the characters' sadness without it explicitly being stated. The descriptions of the countryside were so vivid, I felt like I was there. I have already checked out another book by Claire Keegan, I love her writing so much.

Foster by Claire Keegan is an incredible story of tenderness, childhood and connection. It’s subtle and simple but impactful and important. It, truly, touched my heart in such a wonderful way, and the things Claire Keegan has decided to highlight are powerful and real in a way that implored me to recommend this novella to literally everyone! Five stars, no doubt about it. And I would love to own this, in physical form {I read this via audiobook} as there were so many wonderful quotes. Here are a few;

“I am in a spot where I can neither be what I always am nor turn into what I could be.”

“Where there’s a secret there’s shame and shame is something we can do without.”

“Neither one of us talks, the way people sometimes don’t when they are happy. As soon as I have this thought I realize it’s opposite is also true.”

I was surprised to learn that this story was originally published in 2010, in The New Yorker, has sold 120,000+ copies in the UK and Ireland, and is required reading in those schools. This edition, that I’ve experienced, is an expanded and revised version that is now a standalone novella. I read this via audiobook, from Recorded Books {RB Media} and featuring the narrator Aoife McMahon. McMahon’s voice is a wonderful vessel for the perspective of the child and for bringing to life Claire Keegan’s elegant prose. McMahon has narrated Sally Rooney’s novels {where I recognized her from} among many others, and her voice is just incredible. It’s less than 100 pages long, and less than two hours on audio, but it packs a punch! If you read Small Things Like These when it was listed as a Booker nominee and enjoyed it, this is a similar feeling story in many ways {quite unique to itself though} but one that I liked even better!

The story is set in 1981, over a hot summer, on a farm in Ireland. A little girl, who is never named, is sent by her poverty-stricken household to live with relatives she does not know, as her mother prepares to give birth to another child in their already overwhelming home. While there she works hard and is expected to do things the right way, but the man and woman take their time to teach her, praise, listen to, comfort and love her. Under this attention and purpose she blossoms, finding joy and a sense of belonging that was missing. Her time there is precious but she is never sheltered, instead she is guided through things like a funeral. All the while being told she is wanted and feeling it’s truth.

There is such a tenderness in this writing. Claire Keegan truly captures the innocence of the child, in this situation. I thought a lot of my own upbringing in rural poverty and the jobs I was given by my father, on our farm. In those early years I learned to do things that my friends couldn’t do. I got up early, worked hard, and my father taught me the right ways of doing things. That supervision and guiding made me feel loved. To this day those are memories I cherish. I wasn’t sheltered from the hardship of being poor, or the ways life works on a farm, that animals would die and sometimes we wouldn’t have a lot to eat. I was trusted with the truth and given room to grow. My mother was the exact opposite of this. She was cold, withholding and didn’t participate in the work the same way. Without my father I wonder if I’d have made it to my 18th birthday. I wonder if I’d ever have known what I was capable of, at all. This novella really sends the message that it is not poverty that destroys children, but the neglect and the withholding of love and validation. It doesn’t even fully vilify the family she comes from, and acknowledges the struggle they are deep in. Rather it highlights the importance of attention and love. The girl becomes a whole person, full of value, in this environment.

What a beautiful story and one that is so full of life-affirming hope. Such a terrific read!

+Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this audiobook, what a treat.