“I am in a spot where I can neither be what I always am nor turn into what I could be.”
Claire Keegan is a master at packing an emotional wallop in a short number of pages, and she's at her very best in "Foster." The author of "Small Things Like These," "Walk the Blue Fields," and "Antarctica" beautifully renders a neglected child who is sent to live with relatives in rural Ireland while her mother has the latest in a series of children.
“It is something I am used to, this way men have of not talking: they like to kick a divot out of the grass with a boot heel, to slap the roof of a car before it takes off, to spit, to sit with their legs wide apart, as though they do not care.”
The unnamed child quickly develops a deep attachment to her aunt and uncle, who have suffered an unspeakable loss that they've left unspoken. Focusing their grief and love on their niece, the Kinsellas show her the attention she has never received in her home.
Much is hinted at and little is explicitly stated in "Foster," but a heartbreaking final scene elevates this short story into an unforgettable tale.
“‘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.’”
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