"Here there is room, and time to think. There may even be money to spare." Just like Small things like these, her previous novella, Foster delicately depicts daily chores on a farm in Ireland, where the narrator, a young girl, has been taken to her mother's sister's.
Here is a new life with different people, her aunt and uncle, quiet and benevolent, with their little weird habits. The girl closely watches them, trying to decipher their tiniest gestures and words, sensing something is missing.
Things, animals and plants shiver in unison with the girl's feelings and sensations, all of them depicted in a deceptively flat style.
That's what literature is about, telling stories that have been told a thousand times, but with style.