"Foster" & "The Writing School": Long Story Short

Two books I wish everyone would read.

Foster, Claire Keegan (2010)

What does it say about our culture that we have the phrase “hatchet job” to describe the ravage of a sharp mind and poison pen against books and movies that fail, and yet (to the best of my knowledge) we have no word for its opposite? We talk of writing in “glowing terms” and “heaping praise” and any number of other dead phrases (to borrow from the late Martin Amis), but the fact that we have no single shorthand like “hatchet job” for celebratory reviews must be telling of something. Whatever label we might give such a commendation, anything I have to say about Claire Keegan’s Foster would surely fall under its heading.

Foster is word-perfect, humanely told, and expertly crafted. As a story and as a piece of writing, Foster is as unadorned as it gets, and I marvelled on each page at how stripped away every sentence is. It’s as if Keegan is performing a magic trick or daredevil feat in which she removes layer upon layer while we wonder how little can remain a…