“Foster” by Claire Keegan
“And that is when he puts his arms around me and gathers me into them as though I were his own.”
“Foster,” a short little book by beloved Irish author Claire Keegan, follows an unnamed young girl as she lives with the Kinsellas, a foster family, in rural Ireland. Due to her family’s financial struggles, she lives with the Kinsellas for the summer while her mother has another child. She is not quite sure when she will return to her home, but over the course of the book, the Kinsellas become her home. They love the young girl and treat her with kindness and care that she has never experienced before.
Though very short, the book’s prose makes it very. Nothing truly monumental happens, but Keegan’s beautiful sentences lend themselves to an emotional and layered story, where readers watch the young girl grow into herself within the Kinsellas home, just for her to eventually be taken away. I don’t often cry after spending less than 130 pages with a character, but the ambiguous ending of the story wrenched my heart in an unexpected way.
— Alexa Donovan, Arts Editor
“Babel” by R.F. Kuang
Some people enjoy using vices to escape from reality, such as scrolling on social media, binge-watching TV or excessive shopping. My preferred form of escapism is binge-reading a lengthy novel that transports me to another world — just like this one.
“Babel” begins after a cholera outbreak in China tragically orphans our protagonist, Robin Swift. Professor Lovell takes Robin in, bringing him to London where he spends his formative years in Lovell’s household, learning Latin, Ancient Greek and Chinese. This training prepares him to attend Babel, Oxford University’s institution of translation. Here, he continues his education and learns how to do silver working — a practice that uses enchanted silver bars to make meaning out of what is lost in linguistic translation. The silver used in this practice has the potential for magical results, and thus gives the British empire the power to pursue its goals of colonization. Once Robin realizes the consequences of his work, he begins to question where his loyalties lie.
Whenever I picked up this book, I would become so engrossed that multiple hours would pass before I looked up again. If you grew up obsessed with “Harry Potter” or were a fan of “The Secret History,” you will no doubt find joy in this fantastical dark-academia novel. To put it simply, I wish I could erase this book from my mind and indulge in it all over again.
— Siobhán Minerva, Deputy Arts Editor
“Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy” by Elizabeth Beller
Americans are often in search of pop-culture icons, and often, the more elusive this icon is, the better. An important fixture of American culture — and maybe the closest thing we’ll get to our own royal family — is, of course, the Kennedy family. The late Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, the wife of John F. Kennedy Jr., could even be considered America’s own Princess Diana.
In “Once Upon a Time,” Elizabeth Beller reveals an intimate portrait of Bessette-Kennedy, the model-like blonde who started as a fashion publicist for Calvin Klein before meeting her husband. What unfolds thereafter is a modern and heavily publicized continuation of the Kennedy era, but this time it’s set in Tribeca clubs and Central Park, rather than the Oval Office and the White House Rose Garden.
This biography lifts the veil on Bessette-Kennedy’s life — a narrative often dominated by her tragic death and relationship — instead underscoring her zest for life and her love for the beloved people around her. While there are only about 100 public photographs of her, the minimalist style she embodied immortalized her as a ’90s fashion icon. The book chronicles the highs and lows of adapting to the Kennedy standard and how public obsession can lead to tragedy.
— Maggie Turner, Deputy Under the Arch Editor
“We Are Okay” by Nina LaCour
The novel “We Are Okay” by Nina LaCour gives readers the ultimate food for thought: You go through your life thinking all the things you have are necessary, until one day you leave home with nothing but your phone, wallet and a picture of your mother.
This book tells the story of Marin, a California native, who attends college in New York. She left everything behind when she moved away, including her best friend Mabel, but there is more to this friendship than what meets the eye. As Marin grapples with her new reality thousands of miles from home, she also learns secrets about her family that make her question everything. But readers discover that despite all of the hardships, trials and life-changing events that people may face, we are, and will continue to be, okay.
— Pritheva Zakaria, Contributing Writer
Contact the Arts Desk at [email protected].
