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Buy Foster By Claire Keegan online from Woodbine Books – free delivery in ROI on orders over €50
From the author of the Booker-shortlisted Small Things Like These, a heartbreaking, haunting story of childhood, loss and love by one of Ireland’s most acclaimed writers.
AN IRISH TIMES TOP 100 BEST IRISH BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY
WINNER OF THE DAVY BYRNES IRISH WRITING AWARD
‘A real jewel.’ Irish Independent
‘A small miracle.’ Sunday Times
‘A thing of finely honed beauty.’ Guardian
‘As good as Chekhov.’ David Mitchell
It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A girl is sent to live with foster parents on a farm, not 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. But in a house where there are meant to be no secrets, she discovers how fragile her idyll is.
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Readers love Foster:
????? ‘To say this story is exceptional doesn’t adequately describe it. If there were 10 stars to award this would deserve every one. Claire Keegan has a wonderful talent at storytelling.’
????? ‘Foster is beautifully and confidently written, the prose is evocative, poignant and moving, with wonderfully atmospheric imagery … Claire Keegan is an incredible storyteller.’
????? ‘I’ve read books four times the length that didn’t have near as much depth. There are so many layers to the writing and this is close to perfection.’
????? ‘This is another literary diamond packed full of emotional charge, depth, poignancy and wonder. This novella is a thing of pure beauty and I urge you to read it!’
????? ‘I rarely cry when reading a book but I wept … Read it everyone. It will stay with you forever.’
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Keegan's fiction makes most novels look too fancy; her short stories make most prose seem too plain. Her inner and outer landscapes, the palpable and the imagined, are all of a piece. You think you are just looking – it turns out you are travelling.
London Review of Books
Keegan writes with such grace and accuracy that it is impossible not to be drawn into each world she creates.
Big Issue
'It's a pleasure to read a writer who has truly grasped the art of the short story, and can capture the soul of its subject in such a short space.
Irish Mail on Sunday
Simply put, Claire Keegan is one of the greatest fiction writers in the world.
George Saunders
A small miracle.
Sunday Times
A thing of finely honed beauty.
Guardian
A real jewel.
Irish Independent
Foster confirms Claire Keegan's talent. She creates luminous effects with spare material, so every line seems to be a lesson in the perfect deployment of both style and emotion.
Hilary Mantel
A masterly combination of things pregnant and poised, frozen and in flux.
Times Literary Supplement
Foster is a thing of finely honed beauty and cumulative power, a story that deals in suggestion, exactitude and telling detail. It has the sure-footedness of great short story writing and a sense of confidence in the sparseness of the form that extends from the writer to the reader, allowing all that is not said to hold sway on the imagination.
Observer
A haunting, crafted narrative making superb use of the first-person voice and of an urgent present tense. It has beauty, harshness, menace and the spine of steel worthy of high art … There is no disputing that the greater the writing, the more may be confidently left unsaid. Keegan is a realist who has mastered describing the chaos of feeling. Humanity at its most vulnerable fills the silences in Foster , an unsentimental story that triumphs through a subtle ambivalence that stalks and shapes the emerging emotional intelligence of the narrator.
Irish Times – Eileen Battersby
Short stories are sometimes called gems. This one is as lyrical as poetry yet so concentrated it's a novel in miniature. A real jewel.
Irish Independent
'Foster is a beautifully paced and delicately wrought tale … Claire Keegan has truly inhabited the mind of a child and crafted a story that will stay with you long after the final page has been read.'
Sunday Express
As good as Chekhov.
David Mitchell
One of the most exquisite things I've ever read.
Elizabeth Day
