Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Set in New Ross, a small town in County Wexford, this novella tells the story of Bill Furlong, the town’s hard-working coal merchant, in the busy days leading up to Christmas. He is a well-respected member of the local community, a family man with five daughters.
On his rounds he delivers coal to a convent where the nuns run a Magdalene Laundry, a place of confinement and forced labour for ‘fallen women’. He finds a girl locked in the coal bunker, presumably by the nuns, who is cold and frightened and asking after her baby. The book addresses his moral dilemma: should he turn a blind eye, like the rest of the community, or should he do something about it? His daughters attend a school affiliated to the convent so he worries about the consequences for his own family if he speaks out. There is something very symbolic, too, about challenging the Church’s influence and actions at Christmas.
He reflects on his own upbringing as the illegitimate son of a servant in the ‘big house’ outside the town. He was very lucky in that his mother’s employer treated him and his mother kindly and gave him a good start in life. Things could have been very different indeed.
This is a beautifully written short novel, only 128 pages long. It is very clearly and concisely written, with not a word out of place. It manages to be both deeply moving but also unsentimental. I thoroughly enjoyed it and am now keen to read the author’s earlier books.
Small Things Like These has won many accolades, including the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year. It was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, and is already being talked about as one of the great Irish Novels. It is out in paperback in November 2022.
Emma Andrews