Foster, by Claire Keegan

An International Bestseller and one of The Times’ “Top 50 Novels Published in the 21st Century” — this is the kind of book you’ll finish in a single sitting and carry with you for years.

It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A young girl is brought by her father to stay with relatives on a farm, uncertain when — or whether — she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas’ quiet, unhurried household, she discovers something she has rarely known: warmth, steadiness, and the particular tenderness of people who simply show up. Slowly, gently, she begins to bloom.

But something unspoken lingers beneath the surface of this idyllic summer. And summers, as we all know, must end.

Claire Keegan writes with a precision that feels almost impossible — every sentence doing quiet, enormous work. Winner of the prestigious Davy Byrnes Award and originally published in abridged form in The New Yorker, Foster is now available for the first time ever as a full, standalone edition in the US. A slim book with an immeasurable heart.

This is the kind of story that reminds you why literary fiction matters. It asks big questions — about belonging, about what children absorb in silence, about the love we carry and the love we leave behind — and it does so in under 100 pages.

Perfect for fans of quiet, luminous storytelling. The sort of book we’d press into your hands without hesitation on a grey Maine afternoon.

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