It was such a treat to re-read these, and especially, to read them one after another, to notice the kinds of things they do, and do differently. In particular, I was fascinated by the difference in narrative voice — Small Things Like These is written in the third-person (“Down in the yard, Bill Furlong, the coal and timber merchant, rubbed his hands”) but with frequent use of free indirect discourse, whereas Foster is in the first-person (“I shake the plaits out of my hair and lie flat on the back seat, looking up through the rear window”). This was startling, because I remembered them as being the same, and indeed, I think that overall, the achieved effects are similar, in the way that you seem to move in and out of the character’s understanding, seeing things both from within their perspective and from outside it.
The way Foster makes this happen is really interesting. You might expect that it would be through the use of retrospection — present self telling the story knows things that past self didn’t. But, as mentioned, it’s in present tense, so it can’t do that. Yet there are sentences that almost give the effect of a retrospective narration, because they seem so startlingly prescient: “I am in a spot where I can neither be what I always am nor turn into what I could be.” Another guess would be that the story plays on having a child narrator to create a bit of dramatic irony, where the child observes and describes a scene they do not fully understand; one that readers will interpret differently. But this child seems wise beyond her years — often as not, it is her observations that we are relying on to form our own judgments (“I wonder why my father lies about the hay. He is given to lying about things that would be nice, if they were true,” or, “It is something I am used to, this way men have of not talking”). Even when she is reporting on feelings that would seem to remind us that she is a child, the very awareness of them seems adult: “I want to say I am afraid but am too afraid to say so.” So I am tempted to say that the way the story accomplishes this effect of both closeness and distance is through a clever illusion, a different kind of ‘impossible’ narration — a voice that knows more than the character whose thoughts and feelings it represents. But that’s just a hypothesis — maybe I’ll work it out more fully some day…
The other brilliant thing about these two stories is the way they balance calm contentment and a sense of looming dread. There’s a distinctly Gothic bent to both books that’s absolutely brilliant — it really does make your blood run cold, of a sudden. And the way both texts delicately hint at what is to come, subtly produce a vague foreboding, is marvelous. But here the contrast between the two is also noteworthy, because in Small Things, the Gothic vein is clearly tied to social critique, whereas Foster seems to pointedly distance itself from politics. There is a reference to the hunger strikers, and it’s arguably a book about poverty, but it seems to studiously avoid any invitation to judgment — unless maybe in the final line. Though I also think there’s a compelling ambiguity to that final line; it’s not entirely clear who is being spoken to and who the referent is. That’s my reading of it, anyway, but there’s an interview with the author where it’s obvious that she sees it differently. You can find it here, but I will say that I initially found it sort of off-putting, and I disagree in a few different ways, when it comes to the story!
A final thought, which is that something that I think is a truly tantalizing question in both books, is whether the main character changes or develops. This is especially fascinating in Small Things Like These — the story is sort of structured as if there were some kind of catalyst or epiphany that produced a decision to do something different, but looking back, it could also just be a semi arbitrary account of a lot of things that happened in a happenstance sequence, no causal connections whatsoever. The choice to act could easily not have happened — notably, even at the very moment, there is a question of whether it will — and it’s all a bit of luck. Yet one also has the sense that it couldn’t have not happened, that the protagonist’s personality led inevitably in this direction (and the story seems to suggest as much, sometimes). I suspect that you could ask the same question of Foster, though that one does have some clearer signs of a change. But it’s arguably in tension with the knowing-ness of the narrative voice I mentioned above, so… it really could be a question! Again, something I could maybe think more about, some time.
For now, I’m excited that she has a new book coming out next month, though also sort of confused as to how new it is — it might be “expanded and revised” stories from Antarctica, which I haven’t read yet? Probably worth buying the new one anyhow, right? But I should read Antarctica first? I guess I know I want to be a Claire Keegan completist so there’s no real debate here, just a question of timing.
Kasia Reads 