Her expectations are influenced by what has already occurred in her own family.
There is constant juxtaposition between her own family and her new foster family. Foster is narrated by a young girl who is fostered out to another family, the Kinsellas, ‘her mother’s people’, for the summer months. The story is set in rural Wexford and is a perfect example of a Bildungsroman novel. After the Rain – Repairs at Ballymore Farm, Co. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto in March 2009. Keegan was the Ireland Fund Artist-in-Residence in the Celtic Studies Department of St. She was a visiting professor at Villanova University in 2008. Keegan has twice been the recipient of the Francis MacManus Award. Keegan has won the inaugural William Trevor Prize, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Olive Cook Award and the Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award 2009. Other awards include The Hugh Leonard Bursary, The Macaulay Fellowship, The Martin Healy Prize, The Kilkenny Prize and The Tom Gallon Award. American writer Richard Ford, who selected Foster as winner of the Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award 2009, wrote in the winning citation of Keegan’s ‘thrilling’ instinct for the right words and her ‘patient attention to life’s vast consequence and finality’. September 2010 brought the publication of the ‘long, short story’ Foster. Her second collection of stories, Walk the Blue Fields, was published in 2007. Keegan’s first collection of short stories was Antarctica (1999). She returned to Ireland in 1992 and later lived for a year in Cardiff, Wales, where she undertook an MA in creative writing and taught undergraduates at the University of Wales.
Keegan travelled to New Orleans, Louisiana when she was seventeen and studied English and Political Science at Loyola University. Trust your own judgement and use or discard the following notes as you judge them to be useful (or not) to you in your comparing and contrasting this text with at least two others from the suggested list given to you by your teacher.Īll page references are from the beautifully produced Faber and Faber paperback editionīorn in County Wicklow in 1968, she is the youngest of a large family. Your first task is to read the short story/novella (all 88 pages!) and begin to form your own opinion as to what is happening in the story. More than likely you will be studying this text as part of your Comparative Studies module for Leaving Cert English Higher Level. To work on the level of suggestion is what I aim for in all my writing.” “It’s essentially about trusting in the reader’s intelligence rather than labouring a point. In one of her many interviews after the publication of ‘Foster’ in 2010, Claire Keegan challenged her would-be readers: The cover photo was given to Claire Keegan by Madelaine Greene, wife of John McGahern.