I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Small Things Like These since I read it a year ago, and Claire Keegan has done it again with Foster, a short but extremely emotional, powerful story about a little girl who goes to stay with a relative of her mother’s over the summer.

Keegan’s stories are not big, in that no heroic changes happen in the grand scheme of things. But they are great exactly because they’re small and personal: their impact feels real, and more to the core.

As always, Keegan’s pen flows, and her brand of realism makes her work read like classics. Foster also has some exquisite symbolism.

It’s impossible to read Foster, and not finish it in tears, not fall in love with it.

Thank you a million times to Grove Atlantic for giving me access to the DRC on NetGalley!