John and Edna Kinsella temporarily foster a young girl at their dairy farm in County Wexford, Ireland. This is to relieve the girl’s mother, who is a relative, and who is in the final stages of pregnancy. At the Kinsella’s farm the girl enjoys better care and nurturing than with her own parents.
The girl narrator, from whose point of view the entire tale is told, remains nameless. This reflects the neglect and lack of attention she has received in her crowded biological home.
Keegan writes sparely but her descriptive powers are so fine that she conjures up scenes with beautifully chosen words and phrases which trigger the imagination.
At one point the girl nearly drowns in a well. It seems to her that a ‘hand like hers’ had tried to pull her down into the water. The reader has previously learned that the Kinsella’s had a lost son who drowned in a slurry tank.
The ending is ambiguous. The girl calls John Kinsella ‘Daddy’ at the point of her departure home to re-join her biological family and restart school. The reader is left to wonder whether she be forced away from the couple who have come to love her.
This is a short story that can be read in three hours and is time well spent.
First published 2010
88 pages in Faber paperback
ISBN 978-0571-37914-9
Claire Keegan