The blurb:
It is 1985, in an Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces into his busiest season. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him—and encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Church.
This is a short, beautiful gem of a novella—barely 30,000 words. But it packs a lot into that brief word count.
One of the questions that almost inevitably gets asked in the aftermath of atrocities is something like, "How could nearby people not know what was happening?" Small Things Like These attempts to answer the question a little, and provide some insight into why people might choose to never ask the question about what exactly is happening behind those walls.
What happened to women, girls and their children in Ireland's Magdalene laundries was a secret—the institutions operated behind closed doors, under a veneer of respectability given by the Catholic Church and the nuns who ran them. After two hundred years, the discovery of 155 unmarked graves in the grounds of one of the laundries brought the walls down and let some light in.
Small Things Like These takes the larger scandal and puts it in a small town context. Bill Furlong, child of a single mother and now father to five daughters, lives and works in that small town. His daughters attend the local Catholic school for girls, noted as the only good school for girls in town. He runs a coal and timber business; hard work, but he and his wife and their daughters get by okay.
It's nearly Christmas; making an early morning delivery to the supposed 'training school' he discovers a girl locked inside the coal shed. It's below freezing, she's in a thin little dress—of course he wakes the convent up for help. They take the girl inside, bringing Bill along as well. He sees girls working in the kitchen on his way to the Mother Superior's study. There, her reaction is carrot and stick: the carrot is an envelope stuffed with cash, and the stick is a veiled threat about his daughters being able to continue at the school, just when they're all doing so well. Later, the pub owner and his wife also urge Bill to keep the peace; the nuns are a power in town and they can make life very difficult for Bill and his family, should they choose to.
Running simultaneously with the modern day (okay, mid-80s) storyline is Bill's recollection of his own childhood as the son of an unwed mother. He's bullied at school, loved at home; he and his mother are supported by his mother's employer, an older woman of independent means i.e. she's in a rare position to do as she wishes, not as society would have her do. Employing Bill's mother is a small rebellion—but in a fiercely conservative country like Ireland, it's actually huge.
As the title suggests, the book focuses on the small things in Bill's life: the family making Christmas cake after coming home from the town Christmas tree lighting ceremony, buying a pair of shoes for his wife for Christmas, his quiet delight in his daughters' lives. They're all very ordinary, and he knows that, but it's still important to him. There's one detail that caught be and exemplifies the quiet storytelling skills. Right at the start of the book, we see the nuns for just a glimpse, and they're noted as talking to the town's more well-heeled residents. It's barely a line, but it tells us everything about where the nuns stand, morally speaking.
That's Keegan's style throughout the whole novel; understated but telling. It's one of those books you slow down and read carefully, appreciating the craft and how well it serves the story, giving the reader a meaningful story in so few words.
Started: 11 July 2025
Finished: 12 July 2025
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