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

Barbara

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

Essence

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

Lotte Tielemans

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

My heart does not so much feel that it is in my chest as in my hands, and that I am carrying it along swiftly, as though I have become the messenger for what is going on inside of me.

I hold on as though I’ll drown if I let go, and listen to the woman who seems, in her throat, to be taking it in turns, sobbing and crying, as though she is crying not for one now, but for two.

Foster quotes

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