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Genre: Domestic Fiction

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Rating: 5/5

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Among the hidden and cracked crevices between its pages, Foster reveals that love, once given, never leaves untouched.

“Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.”

More than anything, Foster is a story that is all too easy to miss. It starts and ends in a heartbeat, leaving you dazed and confused about what kind of journey you just went on and got yourself into. Like a wisp of memory, if you don’t pay enough attention, it will simply run through your desperate fingers and escape, flowing like water. It’s so simple and short, this emotional and imaginative book, but behind every moment of mystery, there is something deeper, something special. And among the hidden and cracked crevices between the pages, Foster leaves the reader with so much to dwell upon and discover on their own.

The first thing that jumps out at you, even before you know anything about the story, is the prose. For it’s not something that is often seen in many books. It’s not beautifully crafted with emulated imagery and metaphors, nor does it flow like a river, like so many of my beloved stories do. No, Keegan’s accomplishments do not come from how much there is in her writing, but from what she intentionally omits. Throughout entire chapters and dialogues, there is a sense of vagueness that you can’t help but notice; it seems like Keegan is focusing on certain things in an attempt to welcome the vacant space of others. And it invites the reader to fill in those countless gaps, infusing the story with their own perceptions and ideas. As much as this story might be about love, it is also about how many fractures love is reflected upon. Keegan’s writing, so poignant and purposeful, offers every single reader, including me, the opportunity to create their own kind of story, one that warms your heart and allows you to find an answer to your deepest questions.

“Neither one of us talks, the way people sometimes don’t when they are happy – but as soon as I have this thought, I realise its opposite is also true.”

Now, you might be wondering, what exactly is Foster about? The funny thing is, you don’t find out yourself until the story comes to an end. This is because the book starts off with a little girl, who is sent by her parents to stay in a strangers’ house for a couple of months. We do not know why. Her new foster parents welcome her with a level of love and care she has never known before. She is yet to discover the concept of love, so she is shocked by how different the treatment is, and how the clothes are nicer, and their time together feels fuller. It seems that she has discovered a perfect world, and she comes to love this new set of role models as much as they seem to love her back. And you understand that this is the first time she has ever felt love. But sometime down the road, she discovers the secret, the missing piece that seemed to haunt the entire story, even from her first day there: her new parents had lost their own child before her, and she was replacing the vacant seat at their table.

“Where there’s a secret,’ she says, ‘there’s shame – and shame is something we can do without.”

As the summer comes to an end, and it is time for her to come back, the readers are met with a sudden and abrupt end to the story. We do not get to know how her relationships develop in the future, and whether she decides to go back to her own family where money is tight and attention to children divided, or to this new home, where she is loved and cherished like no other. There are no answers given, only questions. However, something is unmistakably clear: the bond she has created, no matter how artificial it may seem to us, has changed her, and we are taught a lesson: there is nothing more special or important to a child than the love that flows between them and their parents. And everything else is for us to imagine and expand upon.

You might think that this book is simplistic, with its mere 80 pages and austere story of an Irish town and an Irish girl, but Foster seems to understand that the lesson of love and childish hopes can’t be described in just words. Instead, it adopts a different approach: to give the readers a classical story of a child learning love as a stepping stone, a beginning to an understanding and reminder that may not be fully understood. In conclusion, Foster is a tale of being loved for the first time, one that warms your soul and makes your heart beat faster. 5/5.

“Maybe the way back will somehow make sense of the coming.”