Faber & Faber Foster: by the Booker-shortlisted author of Small Things Like These

This very short but beautiful book is one of my all time favorites and that says a lot because I am an avid reader.

Very good quality, the outside cover especially feels good to the touch.However, the font size could have been smaller reducing page count and making the book a little cheaper, but that's me just being picky I guess. The hardcover for ₹1660 seems a little expensive for a little under 100 pages. There's also a fifteen page (2 chapters) excerpt from "Small things like these", a book from the same author; this seemed very unnecessary and seems to just be there to increase the page count.

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As we can read in most reviews, Claire Keegan's story 'Foster' touches many people very deeply. How is this possible with this actually very simple story, which superficially can be summarized in one sentence ('A girl spends a summer with an older couple, where she has a better life than with her actual family?) Could this be because it operates powerfully on a much deeper level?Much has already been written about the impressively high literary quality and the extraordinary art of storytelling - here I would like to shed light on the spiritual aspect of the little book:In my opinion, the secret of the tale lies in the fact that it subtly describes a spiritual and mystical experience or, in Christian terminology, the return home to God the FATHER. And the reader is imperceptibly taken on this excursion into another dimension - and at the end dropped back into their usual reality; but enriched and stimulated by the experience.The child, a child of the FATHER (God) like all of us, lives in a world of suffering, lack, effort, lovelessness and lies. Now it gets to know a completely different way of BEING; it makes the experience of love, abundance, lightness and truthfulness - of Heaven.To clarify, here is a selection of incidents in the story that have a deeper meaning:• At the beginning we read that the biological father lost a heifer in a game - a young animal that actually belongs to a herd. The father is a bad shepherd.Later in the book, a stray heifer appears again and “panics and finally races past us.” Kinsella’s cattle are different: “On a strip of land, tall Frisian cows stand all around us, grazing. Some of them look up as we pass, but not one of them moves away. They have huge bags of milk and long teats.” Mr Kinsella is a good shepherd.• When she arrives, the girl sees herself ‘wild like a gypsy child’: homeless, neglected, poor. But now she is entering a new, completely different home: “Here there is room, and time to think. There may even be money to spare.”• Mrs Kinsella invites her in with the words: “Come on in, leanbh…” Leanbh is used in Gaelic for baby: a (new) birth.Later, Mr Kinsella's nickname for the girl is "petal": symbolism for spiritual blossoming.• As the biological/worldly father forgets to unload the girl's suitcase, she has to take off her old clothes (her old self). The girl takes a hot bath and is washed: (ritual) cleansing and a new beginning.• “… There is a big double bed there… I know that’s where they sleep, and for some reason I’m happy that they sleep in the same bed.”: The foster parents are ONE made up of the male and female principles. It is a realm of nonduality.• The first excursion goes across the meadows to the fountain. (Psalm 23: “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.”) The foster parents drink from the spring; fresh pure water - symbols of the origin and preservation of life, blessing. “This water is cool and clean as anything I have ever tasted...” And there is always plenty of this water in this well, even if dryness and drought prevail in the other reality.• Some words about the symbolism of the father: Mr Kinsella represents the FATHER. This becomes particularly clear when the take the walk on the beach:He takes the child by the hand, carries her, hugs her, lights the way, tells her: "Don't be afraid." He tells the story of the colt that, exhausted and almost dead, was fished out of the sea by a fisherman and came back to life. In my opinion, there is an analogy here to the biblical term 'fisher of men': we too can be saved from our confusion, awakened from our exhaustion and lethargy.The book is full of metaphors of this kind; a list of all the examples and their interpretation would go beyond the scope of this review. And I would also like to follow Kinsella's advice to say only what is necessary - an art that the girl also learns ("...I have learned enough, grown enough, to know that what happened is not something I need ever mention. ») and which Claire Keegan herself, of course, masters excellently.But perhaps this selection of examples can encourage you to pick up the book again and read it slowly and carefully, sentence by sentence, word by word, with this point of view of a spiritual experience and thus discover subtle detail by detail and answer for yourself what the fall into the well symbolizes, who or what the third light is about and what the deceased son could be about.I wish you a lot of joy with it. May we all find ourselves back in the arms of the FATHER in the end. Run!A personal note: I myself am not on the Christian-mystical path - so I don't want to represent this path in any proselytizing way - but I am familiar with its symbolism. And spiritual experiences, mystical experiences - a dwelling in ONENESS - are ultimately identical in all traditions.I struggled for some time with the question of whether it would be somewhat counterproductive to reveal the secret of this little book. But it seems to me more urgent than ever that we children of men must clearly recognize what we actually long for in all our -ultimately futile- efforts for happiness.

I had read Small Things Like These by this author and fell in love with it's language. It had the ability to look at insignificant details and make them hugely important.Foster is another novella set in Ireland and was recommended to me by a friend whose reading choices I admire.The book has 88 pages split into 8 chapters and printed using a large font (it doesn't take long to read!)The size of the novella gives a feel that every word matter and has been carefully chosen for it's purpose - the result is a rich piece of writing which is a joy to read.I thought that this sits somewhere between a book and a poem with a touching story at it's centre written in a lyrical style.The child narrated the story of her experience - she is young and tells us only what she sees. The inner strength comes from what is not said and the reader gradually learns more as the hidden stories are allowed to develop. The people in this book say what is necessary but mean so much more. Gradually we get more understanding about the child and her immediate future.The ending is powerful with a combination of emotions that is very challenging to portray in so few words.