Claire Keegan’s novella, Small Things Like These, was a little gem, and Foster is another one.
A mere 76 pages, it is wonderfully complete: saying everything in just a few words, leaving enough unsaid for the reader to draw their own conclusions, and with a remarkable emotional depth. Every word, action and description is steeped in its time and place.
The novella starts with a young girl being driven by her father from rural Clonegal, Ireland, to Wexford near the coast “where my mother’s people come from.” Her mother has an infant baby and is pregnant with the next child, and there are suggestions of additional children as well. Her father is improvident (he “lost our red Shorthorn in a game of forty-five”) and careless (he forgets to drop off the girl’s suitcase with her).
The Kinsellas, with whom the girl is sent to stay, are quite different. A childless couple, there is a calm routine in their lives, they have plenty of food, and they welcome the girl.
“We’ll keep the child gladly”, the woman said.
The hot baths, the goodnight kisses, and the plentiful food are clearly a novelty to the unnamed girl, who slowly warms and adapts to the unaccustomed kindness. Yet the Kinsellas have had a tragic loss in their lives, which a gossipy neighbour tells the girl about as soon as she gets a chance.
No one speaks much in this novella, and much remains unsaid. The girl is conscious of the emotions behind the spare conversation, but often does not have the words to describe them, even to herself.
Her hands are like my mother’s hands but there is something else in them too, something I have never felt before and have no name for.
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 if they do not care.
Inevitably, a letter arrives from home: the new baby has arrived, school will start soon, and the girl is expected home. The novella has a lovely, ambiguous, sad ending.
Foster is very short, but any more would be too much: the novella is complete in itself. It is such a pleasure to read this piece by an assured, accomplished author.
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