claire keegan – Mike Wilson https://mikewilsonwriter.com Writing in the post-truth world Fri, 28 Jul 2023 21:59:18 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.3 177517995 Book Review – Foster, by Claire Keegan https://mikewilsonwriter.com/2023/08/13/book-review-foster-by-claire-keegan/ https://mikewilsonwriter.com/2023/08/13/book-review-foster-by-claire-keegan/#respond Sun, 13 Aug 2023 21:55:30 +0000 https://mikewilsonwriter.com/?p=2581

Foster, a novella by award-winning Irish author Claire Keegan, was originally published in 2010 and has been republished in the U.S. in 2022.  An unnamed girl is taken by her father to live with a couple at a farm. The girl likes it better than she like her birth home and its unclear if this arrangement is permanent. There’s also some mystery about the couple. The prose is perfect, both true to the child at that age and with details evoking a lot of story that’s never said out loud. Wonderful writing. Kirkus Reviews calls it gut-wrenching:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/claire-keegan/foster/#:~:text=Like%20all%20of%20Keegan’s%20work,insightful%20observations%20of%20the%20world.

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Book Review – Small Things Like These, by Claire Keegan https://mikewilsonwriter.com/2022/12/23/book-review-small-things-like-these-by-claire-keegan/ https://mikewilsonwriter.com/2022/12/23/book-review-small-things-like-these-by-claire-keegan/#respond Fri, 23 Dec 2022 23:01:00 +0000 https://mikewilsonwriter.com/?p=2254

Small Things Like These is a novella-length story by Irish writer Claire Keegan that, ultimately, is about the Magdalen laundries, run and financed by the Catholic Church in concert with the Irish State, where girls with child out of wedlock were forced to labor and give up their babies, the ones who didn’t die, to be adopted out. However, most of the story is a portrayal of simple life and the small things that make it up. It’s also a character sketch of a man who soldiers on for the sake of his family but is moved, against conventional prudence and deference to the power of the church, to help one of the girls at a Magdalen laundry. The writing is absolutely superb. Kirkus Reviews calls it stunning:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/claire-keegan/small-things-like-these/

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