Keegan’s beautiful new novella, Foster, is no less likely to move you than any heaping 400-page tome you’ll read this year ... Keegan’s novella is a master class in child narration. The voice resists the default precociousness, and walks the perfect balance between naïveté and acute emotional intelligence ... Keegan averts expectations in the couple’s portrayal, which brings Foster some welcome levity ... Like a great, long Ishiguro novel, Keegan makes us complicit in what her characters want, setting us up for utter heartbreak when they don’t get it
[A] writer of sparse, assured sentences that burrow into something ineffable about what it is to be alive and then hold it up with care for our examination and pleasure ... It is even tighter — and better for that, I would argue — than the equally slim Small Things Like These ... The structure of the story is crystalline, unfussed: We begin at the start of something; we move almost completely linearly through the present tense; we finish when what started on the first page comes to an end. There is a clear and jarring rupture in the second half...followed by a devastatingly earnest and heartbreaking denouement ... This is not to say any of Foster is predictable — which in itself is remarkable ... Foster is exactly as sad as you imagine it would be, but more stunningly alive than you have any right to expect. Its language settles in your belly and then your bones only seconds after it has passed your eyes ... Foster is a small story, but it is not minimalist ... Keegan’s world is lush and full, the details delicately made, ever more rewarding and engaging with every read ... Keegan takes care to etch out for us this world’s particularity, to let us see,feel and hear it, to enlist us in helping bring it to life. While the scale of her story is modest...the scope of what Keegan can hold inside of it...is as big, brash and ambitious as a story might be.
In her 50s, [Keegan] stands out among her contemporary compatriots who may be better known, such as Roddy Doyle or Maggie O’Farrell or Sally Rooney or Mary Costello. For me, her work seems more universal and her vision both wider and deeper ... The need to tell something longer than can be encapsulated in a short story has led Keegan to slow down. You sense that a great deal of thinking has been done in preparation for the writing, with the result that each sentence matters, and each, sometimes very ordinary, action has real consequences. Thus, although they are small books, they hold a multitude of pleasures I did not expect ... a superb story about a child blossoming and discovering that life, as bleak as it may sometimes seem, is also about possibilities ... This is an exquisite story told in exquisite prose. In it, we sense a world troubled by the most essential kind of trouble. Yet, because of her great gifts, Claire Keegan has given us a tale that affirms life and gives us hope. And, even more important, she has created an unforgettable character whose courage can give us courage. This is a story that makes it clear that no act of bravery is ever futile and, by extension, we must each do our part, however small. Her moral message is timely, and our gratitude should be boundless.
The austere style and measured pacing of Foster is perfect ... Ms. Keegan has a sharp ear for mundane meanness, but she has an even keener appreciation for kindness and its complications. The girl will have to return to her home at the end of the summer, to parents who haven’t been in contact or given any indication they’ve felt her absence. Is it a gift—or a shattering cruelty—to expose a child to a better life, when that life may only be temporary? As Ms. Keegan well knows, only the Mildreds of the world will have a ready answer to that and all the other moral questions this matchless novella raises.
Keegan has been compared to the Russian author Anton Chekhov and fellow Irish writer William Trevor. She shares their keen sense of empathy, eye for the telling detail, and deep attunement to the moral issues raised by meanness and suffering for witnesses as well as the afflicted ... Keegan's output is scarce and her stories are as spare as they are heartrending, whittled down to the essential. If she has published anything that isn't perfect, I haven't seen it ... More than most books four times its size, Foster does several of the things we ask of great literature: It expands our world, diverting our attention outward, and it opens up our hearts and minds. This is a small book with a miraculously outsized impact.
A short novel of uncommon spareness and delicacy ... finely wrought and subtle as ... There are in this story, as in all of Claire Keegan's work, layers of nuance and resonance. Every detail has bearing, some quietly salient, others possessing a delayed charge, so that, again and again, the reader feels the sharp thrill of comprehension. A stray heifer, a light at sea, that joke understood, all pregnant tokens of a fully realized universe of feeling. Keegan is the finest writer at work in Ireland today and this brilliant little book is further proof of it.
A great short story says more than a novel; the genius of the finest short stories lies in what is left unsaid. The feel for the form of the Wicklow-born writer Claire Keegan is as unwavering as if she had first begun to sing opera in the mountains without ever having a music lesson. Her subversive stories are written with the sureness of touch possessed by only the most natural of musicians. The influences of her masters, William Trevor, John McGahern and, most intriguingly, Michael McLaverty, are evident, yet her stately, rhythmic prose, and its physicality, detached tone and assurance, are all her own ... a haunting, crafted narrative making superb use of the first-person voice and of an urgent present tense. It has beauty, harshness, menace and the spine of steel worthy of high art. In a tribute to its singularity it is being published solo, in Keegan's revised, expanded version, by the British publisher Faber next month. This is rarely done ... Keegan evokes the sense of place in a countryside parched by hot sun as precisely as she conveys the bitterness of the inhabitants ... Where does the Irish short story stand in the slipstream of frenetic suburbanisation? How has it been affected by social change? Does McGahern’s influence endure? How important is the sustaining of a tradition? Does emotional power invariably outgun stylistic innovation and experimentation? Exactly how good is Claire Keegan? This wonderful story, as daring today as were the stories of Edna O’Brien on publication, goes a long way towards answering all of those questions.
Keegan's lyrical novella was originally a New Yorker short story, but it has gained greatly from this expansion: the narrative breathes along with the child slowly detaching from her cramped, impoverished home and starting to unfurl, leaf-like, in an atmosphere of attentiveness. This is a story about liminal spaces: about having 'room, and time to think', about the shifting lines between secrecy and shame, and a child's burgeoning apprehension of the gap between what must be explicit and what need merely be implied.
... depicts both the exterior and interior; it is an exquisite piece of perfection. Through her poetic, yet precise prose, gorgeous details, and astute observations, Keegan creates a moving and stunning work ... There is not an egregious word, sentence, or snippet of dialogue in Foster. The prose is lyrical, yet concise and pitch perfect. While the narrator is young and naïve, the narrative is intentionally constructed so that everything that is filtered through her perspective is central to the story ... The girl’s attachment to her foster family develops and tension mounts until the devastating and magnificent ending ... a rare, beautiful, multi-faceted, shimmering, gem of a work—a gift.
... a slim novel that resonates with emotional depth ... Keegan's spare prose conveys both love and sorrow. The novel's apparent simplicity belies its poetic exploration of childhood heartbreak, loss and love. Though the ending is ambiguous, there is no doubt the Kinsellas and the girl are forever linked by the joy of their shared summer.
She is very good—and this new book devoted to a single short story proves that ... Captivating ... Foster, like most of Keegan's short stories, shines like a jewel. But it is very much a traditional short story which is brilliant without being ground-breaking. Ford's lavish praise, quoted on the cover, may not do Keegan any favours since it raises expectations so high. This story is very good, but it's not as extraordinary as he suggests.
an exquisite work of short fiction. The novella, like a short story, uses its prose sparingly, with each word given maximum importance and selected with precision and care. Although clues in the novella place it chronologically in the 1980s, Keegan's narrative restraint and the story's rural setting give the work a timeless quality. And, in fact, the novella's themes --- of generosity, selfless love, being surprised by joy --- almost certainly will ensure that it will continue to attract both popular and critical acclaim.
Language is both lyrical and straight-to-the-point ... The child observes and says little; meaning lies more in what is unsaid and not understood. There is always a lack of comprehension that accompanies the trope of young narrators, where it takes a bit more work to read between the lines, and the skill of a great writer.
In a quiet way, line by line, Keegan invites the reader to pay attention, for the wonder is in the details, in which nothing occurs, but everything happens. A gem of a book, to be savored again and again.
... pristine ... both concise and gut-wrenching. Her superficially simple prose persuasively conveys a child’s sometimes-innocent but always careful and insightful observations of the world. Keegan suggests that children see and understand more than adults might like to think without turning her narrator into a miniature grown-up ... The novella crescendos in a final scene that will inspire many to call their fathers—once they’ve finished weeping ... A heartbreaking but deeply humane story about parents and children.
