Is ‘Foster’ a short story or a novella? Claire Keegan doesn’t care, and nor should we. I have taught it many times, and it never fails. For several years before, pleasingly, she gained a lot of notice, I thought that Keegan was one of the very best writers in Ireland. In ‘Foster’, pupils get a masterclass in careful writing and subtlety. Here too is a portrait of decency in a man, Mr Kinsella, like Furlong in the later short novel Small Things Like These. Irish literature has more than enough dreadful men. Indeed, in her recent short story ‘So Late in the Day’ Keegan presented one such horrendous misogynist. A favourite line from the novel, which we could apply more often in contemporary life:
‘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.’
A bonus with ‘Foster’: the Irish language film An Cailín Ciúin (The Quiet Girl) is a wonderful adaptation.
First published in The New Yorker in February 2010, and available to subscribers to read here; subsequently published in book form by Faber and Faber, 2010
A Personal Anthology 