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.
Foster is quite short (it took about an hour to read) but it contains an entire novel’s worth of story and emotional depth. Set in the early ‘80s in rural County Wexford, Ireland, a young girl is sent to live with an aunt and uncle she has never met while her overworked mother prepares for the birth of her fifth child. I do love an Irish storyteller, and Foster delighted me in setting and voice. Author Claire Keegan packs so much into this — between what is written and what remains unsaid — and in no small measure, it filled and broke my heart. A complete pleasure, I will definitely read Keegan again. (Note: I read an ARC of an impending, expanded rerelease of Foster through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
And so the days pass. I keep waiting for something to happen, for the ease I feel to end: to wake in a wet bed, to make some blunder, some big gaffe, to break something, but each day follows on much like the one before.
As the novel begins, the girl (unnamed) is driven to the farm of her mother’s sister and unceremoniously dropped off by the father who we eventually learn is lazy and feckless and given to drink and gambling. The girl is dirty and anxious and used to work and want, but as her aunt and uncle — who have no children of their own — take loving and empathetic care of her, the girl begins to blossom into happiness. Some secrets will be revealed, some will remain hidden, and throughout, Keegan leaves hints of what the girl’s life must have been at home:
‘You should wash your hands and face before you go to town,’ he says. ‘Didn’t your father even bother to teach you that much?’
I freeze in the chair, waiting for something much worse to happen, but Kinsella does nothing more; he just stands there, locked in the wash of his own speech.
As the summer plays out, her aunt enlists the girl to help with genial household chores and her uncle makes a game out of timing her as she races to the mailbox at the end of the lane for him:
‘It’d be a swift man that would catch you, long legs. We’ll try you again tomorrow and see if we can’t improve your time.’
‘I’ve to go faster?’
‘Oh aye,’ he says. ‘By the time this summer ends you’ll be like a reindeer. There’ll not be a man in the parish will catch you without a long-handled net and a racing bike.’
Eventually, and as expected, her mother gives birth and the Kinsellas are asked to drive the girl back to her crowded, chaotic life; and as loyal as she does remain to her mother, the girl understands that she can never reveal the details of her happy weeks of “foster care”:
‘Nothing happened .’ This is my mother I am speaking to but I have learned enough, grown enough, to know that what happened is not something I need ever mention. It is my perfect opportunity to say nothing.
Ultimately, this makes you question what’s best for the girl: Of course she was expected to return home when her parents were ready to care for her again (although, as the oldest, maybe it doesn’t make complete sense that she hadn’t been needed at home to help care for her younger siblings as her mother became incapacitated), but she had such a lovely and loving summer — with family who were so pleased to have a child in the house — that I couldn’t help but feel bad for her return. This story amused and affected me in the moment, and left me thinking about it long after the last page was turned, and I can see why it was an award winner when it was first released.
