You Should Read FOSTER
“My heart does not so much feel that it is in my chest as in my hands, and that I am carrying it along swiftly, as though I have become the messenger for what is going on inside of me.”
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I read Foster last year and then listened to the audiobook recently when my neighborhood book club chose it. When the US edition was released in 2022, the high praise Foster received made me skeptical. I’ve read too many disappointing books that were marketed with glowing superlatives. Can a 128-page novella truly earn accolades like “perfect” (Maureen Corrigan, NPR), “stunningly alive” (Lynn Steger Strong, LA Times), and “a master class” (Alex Gilvarry, The New York Times Book Review)?
Reader, it absolutely does.
Both times, Foster was a one-day experience for me. The unnamed narrator, a young girl in 1980s Ireland, is sent to live with another family while her pregnant mother approaches yet another due date. John and Edna Kinsella provide steady, attentive care for the girl, whose observations reveal the stark contrast between the peaceful Kinsella home and her family’s overcrowded and overwhelmed household. When Edna touches her, the girl notes Edna’s “thumb, softer than [her] mother’s.” Although the girl’s mother once bought “jelly and ice cream” for the family with lottery winnings, the Kinsellas’ generosity dwarfs the memory of the treat. John gives the girl a pound for “a choc-ice,” and when his wife teases him about the money, he remarks, “Ah, what is she for, only for spoiling?” The girl at first doesn’t quite believe in the Kinsellas’ goodness. She expects the “ease” to end when she “make[s] some blunder, some big gaffe,” but the Kinsellas’ patience doesn't waver. In my favorite scene, John encourages the girl to run to the mailbox as fast as she can. At his ready-set-go, she “take[s] off in a gallop to the end of the lane and get[s] the letters and race[s] back.” Their interaction reveals a new playfulness in the girl, a trait that clearly hasn’t been encouraged at home. The Kinsellas’ compassion becomes more poignant after a gossiping neighbor tells the girl about the son John and Edna lost; it approaches tragedy when they return the girl to her exhausted and disengaged parents after the birth of her newest sibling.
As she tries to understand her feelings upon her return, the girl reflects, “My heart does not feel so much that it is in my chest as in my hands, and that I am carrying it along swiftly, as though I have become the messenger for what is going on inside of me.” I cannot think of a more apt description for the turbulence of childhood and growing up. My daughters are near the girl’s age and when they have outbursts, either happy or sad, I think of Keegan’s line and the confusion of growing up. Sometimes my daughters’ emotions flood out of them, even when (especially when) they can’t name how they feel. At those moments, I hope to be like John Kinsella, who sees the girl’s proffered heart and holds her close, no matter her complicated emotions.
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Pub Date: UK 2010; US 2022
Timeline: a girl’s brief stay with the Kinsellas during the 1980s
Length: 128 pgs; audiobook is 90 minutes
Narrator: unnamed 1st person child narrator
Fun Facts: An abridged version was published as a short story in The New Yorker in 2010.
Pairs Well With: Montana, 1948 by Larry Watson (child narrator); Wildlife by Richard Ford (another child narrator & coming-of-age story); Trespasses by Louise Kennedy (also set in 1980s-ish Ireland)
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In The New York Times Book Review, Alex Gilvarry calls Foster “a master class in child narration” because of its “voice [that] resists the default precociousness, and walks the perfect balance between naïveté and acute emotional intelligence.” What impact did the choice of a child narrator have on you as a reader? How might the story be different if the Kinsellas had narrated? What about if her parents had told the story?
In chapter five, a neighbor named Mildred offers to walk the girl home from a wake. Mildred interrogates the girl about her life with the Kinsellas and crudely reveals how the couple lost a young son. She tells the girl she is “living in the dead’s clothes” and calls her a “dope” for not knowing. Later, John remarks that Edna only let Mildred take the girl to her house because Edna “wants to find the good in others.” According to John, she “trust[s]” others as a way of finding their goodness, “hoping she’ll not be disappointed, but she sometimes is.” Have you ever been burned by someone like Mildred, someone you trusted to have good intentions but who ending up disappointing you? How do you balance “find[ing] the good” with protecting yourself? How far is it possible to extend trust to others?
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Because of the narrator’s age, readers reach conclusions before she does. This creates dramatic irony. After the girl’s father forgets to leave her belongings, Edna Kinsella dresses her in “navy blue trousers and a blue shirt” pulled from a dresser. The girl doesn’t think anything of her wardrobe, but readers pick up on the difference between this outfit and the “thin, cotton dress” the girl showed up in. We know, unlike the narrator, that there is more to the Kinsellas’ story.
This is just one example of how the text invites inference. We can also practice this reading skill in this passage from chapter 3:
“All through the day, I help the woman around the house. She shows me the big, white machine that plugs in, a freezer where what she calls ‘perishables’ can be stored for months without rotting.”
Based on the girl’s description of “the big, white machine that plugs in,” we can assume she hasn’t seen a freezer before. This information fills out our picture of her home life.
Another effective tool Keegan uses is flashback. Flashback has the potential kill a story, drowning its plot in way-back-when. But Keegan deploys it sparingly. Take this passage from chapter 1:
“[I] feel again the steel teeth of the comb against my scalp from earlier that morning, the strength of my mother’s hands as she wove the plaits tight, her belly at my back, hard with the next baby. I think of the clean pants she packed in the suitcase, the letter, and what she might have written. Words had passed between them:
How long should they keep her?
Can’t they keep her as long as they like?
Is that what I’ll say? my father said.
Say what you like. Sure isn’t it what you always do.”
Rather than telling us she remembers her mother brushing her hair that morning, the narrator recalls the physical feeling of the comb scraping against her skin. “I remember” would have functioned as a filter between the narrator and the reader. Instead, through the physicality of this flashback, Keegan eliminates the narrative distance so we are directly in the girl’s body. Additionally, the terse exchange she overhears between her parents suggests a charged, combative atmosphere in their home. By choosing not to include these lines in quotation marks, Keegan locates them in the narrator’s mind, again immersing us in her thoughts.
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Fiction: In chapter 5, Keegan describes the girl walking with John Kinsella:
“There’s a big moon shining on the yard, chalking our way onto the lane and along the road. Kinsella takes my hand in his. As soon as he takes it, I realise my father has never once held my hand, and some part of me wants Kinsella to let me go so I won’t have to feel this. It’s a hard feeling but as we walk along I begin to settle and let the difference between my life at home and the one I have here be.”
Imagine two characters who have had a misunderstanding. Put them somewhere calm: near a lake, on a beach, at a park. Write a scene that depicts a moment of unspoken revelation, where a single gesture causes one of the characters to realize something about herself.
Creative Nonfiction: Keegan chooses the objects in Foster with care. Consider an object from your childhood. What does it reveal? Now put yourself in a specific room in your childhood home. Describe the scene in a 360-degree view from the first-person point-of-view. Then try describing it in third-person. What changes? What do you learn?
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I am notorious for recommending books and never remembering how they end! But the concluding image brought me to tears during both readings. Keegan builds to it beautifully with two earlier scenes. Consider how the girl’s racing progresses:
Chapter 3: “I take off in a gallop to the end of the lane and get the letters and race back.”
Chapter 6: “I take off, race down the yard, the lane, make a tight corner, open the box, get the letters, and race back to the step, knowing my time was not as fast as yesterday’s.”
Both sentences start with the same clause: “I take off.” This syntactic clue lets us know Keegan is building up to something with her repetition. The first time the girl races, Keegan’s sentence is shorter. It is a simple sentence, with a single subject (“I”) and a compound predicate with three verbs (“take,” “get,” and “race”). The girl is focused on getting from the step to the mailbox and back. The second time, she runs strategically, curving around corners. Although the chapter 6 sentence begins the same as the chapter 3 one, Keegan complicates it. The subject (“I”) now has six verbs (“take,” “race,” “make,” “open,” “get,” and “race”). A participial phrase tacked on to the end of the sentence reveals the girl’s growing self-awareness.
These sentences build to the final scene when the girl races toward John:
Chapter 8: “I hear the car braking on the gravel in the lane, the door opening, and then I am doing what I do best. It’s nothing I have to think about. I take off from standing and race on down the lane. . . . There is only one thing I care about now, and my feet are carrying me there.”
Keegan prefaces this third iteration of the “I take off” sentence with the girl’s total, instinctual confidence. She’s no longer focused on her speed but on her destination: John Kinsella. When she runs “smack against him,” we feel as much of a sense of closure as she does of coming home. She may not be able to stay with the Kinsellas forever, they gave her the strength to run toward what she wants, a lesson readers know will help her as she ages.
