Claire Keegan

A small girl is sent to live with foster parents on a farm in rural Ireland, without knowing when she will return home. In the strangers' house, she finds a warmth and affection she has not known before and slowly begins to blossom in their care. And then a secret is revealed and suddenly, she realizes how fragile her idyll is. Winner of the Davy Byrnes Memorial Prize, Foster is now published in a revised and expanded version. Beautiful, sad and eerie, it is a story of astonishing emotional depth, showcasing Claire Keegan's great accomplishment and talent.

Foster

Kat Albanese

I feel at such a loss for words but this is a new place, and new words are needed.

I try to remember another time when I felt like this and am sad because I can't remember a time, and happy, too, because I cannot.

“You don't ever have to say anything,” he says.

“Always remember that as a thing you need never do. Many's the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing."

As soon as he takes it, I realise my father has never once held my hand, and some part of me wants Kinsella to let me go so I won't have to feel this. It's a hard feeling but as we walk along I begin to settle and let the difference between my life at home and the one I have here be.

Where there's a secret', she says, ‘there's shame – and shame is something we can do without.

Foster quotes

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