Sunday book pick: Claire Keegan’s novella ‘Foster’ gives language to the painful drama of childhood

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

The nine-year-old narrator of Claire Keegan’s 2010 novella Foster thinks silently to herself. In this particularly hot summer, the child has been sent away to live with her mother’s relatives – Edna and John Kinsella – because of an inconvenience at home. She’s the daughter of a poor man – food is scarce and there are too many of them for her mother to feed and love. And now, with no hay in the barn or money in their pockets, her mother is pregnant yet again with a baby she doesn’t want.

The joys of affection

The child’s life is marked with lacks. She is dropped off with no assurance from her father about when he’ll be back and she waits for her mother’s letters while knowing there won’t be any. She has not been sent off with clothes or the small accessories that girls need. When Edna draws up a bath for her, she pries out dirt from beneath her fingernails using tweezers, washes her hair and combs it, and dresses her up in old, oversized boys’ clothes. She doesn’t even have a hairbrush or...

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