Small Things Like These
Author: Claire Keegan
Published by: Faber & Faber
Pages: 116
Format: Paperback
My Rating: ★★★★★
Published by: Faber & Faber
Pages: 116
Format: Paperback
My Rating: ★★★★★
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.
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.
My thoughts:
Small Things Like These is an extraordinary novella, with a story that explores the unforgettable sins of Irish society and Catholic Church in the name of religion. It is one of the most powerful stories of courage I’ve read for a long time.
This is a quiet tale, simply told, of an ordinary middle-aged man named Bill Furlong, and his life as a coal seller and family man in a small Irish town. Furlong is a self-made man who comes from nothing, his deceased mother having lived with shame as an unwed mother who reared her child by being a domestic servant of the wealthy, Protestant Mrs. Wilson. He is now married to a woman named Eileen, and together they have five daughters.
One day, Bill is making a fuel delivery to the convent next door to his daughters’ school, separated by only a wall. The Good Shepherd nuns who own the convent also run a so-called ‘training school for girls,’ as well as a laundry service that all the town’s wealthy residents use. However, when Bill arrives, he sees that the girls, some of whom are young mothers, are living in a state of squalor and punishment.
On a second visit to the convent, Furlong discovers a girl named Sarah locked in the coal shed. She asks him to see if the nuns will find her baby. Furlong is then apprehended by the Mother Superior, who makes a show of fussing over Sarah and claiming that she has a mental illness, while insisting that Furlong take tea with her.
The nun intimidates Furlong by making it clear that she knows about his family and offering him a Christmas bonus as a form of hush money. A few days before Christmas, Furlong keeps his employees at the yard while he makes deliveries to customers who have been loyal to his business. When a large order from the Good Shepherds Convent arrives, Furlong takes personal responsibility for the delivery, but shudders with the memory of the troubling time he’d last had there, when he was approached by a girl asking him to help her escape.
As Christmas celebrations get underway and Bill spends quality time with his family, he cannot stop thinking about the girl at the convent or his own past. Bill slowly begins to grasp the enormity of the local convent's heartless treatment of unmarried mothers and their babies. His heart suspects a dark truth about the convent that rings in a similar tone to the plight of his mother, and in time, he is inspired to act. His determination and quiet heroism is hopeful yet haunting as he confronts the truth of one of Ireland's infamous Magdalene laundries.
Small Things Like These is a poignant, tender novel that will appeal to readers of small town and rural fiction, human interest stories and historical fiction. It really is one of those books that everyone should read.
Overall reaction:
Small Things Like These is an extraordinary novella, with a story that explores the unforgettable sins of Irish society and Catholic Church in the name of religion. It is one of the most powerful stories of courage I’ve read for a long time.
This is a quiet tale, simply told, of an ordinary middle-aged man named Bill Furlong, and his life as a coal seller and family man in a small Irish town. Furlong is a self-made man who comes from nothing, his deceased mother having lived with shame as an unwed mother who reared her child by being a domestic servant of the wealthy, Protestant Mrs. Wilson. He is now married to a woman named Eileen, and together they have five daughters.
One day, Bill is making a fuel delivery to the convent next door to his daughters’ school, separated by only a wall. The Good Shepherd nuns who own the convent also run a so-called ‘training school for girls,’ as well as a laundry service that all the town’s wealthy residents use. However, when Bill arrives, he sees that the girls, some of whom are young mothers, are living in a state of squalor and punishment.
On a second visit to the convent, Furlong discovers a girl named Sarah locked in the coal shed. She asks him to see if the nuns will find her baby. Furlong is then apprehended by the Mother Superior, who makes a show of fussing over Sarah and claiming that she has a mental illness, while insisting that Furlong take tea with her.
The nun intimidates Furlong by making it clear that she knows about his family and offering him a Christmas bonus as a form of hush money. A few days before Christmas, Furlong keeps his employees at the yard while he makes deliveries to customers who have been loyal to his business. When a large order from the Good Shepherds Convent arrives, Furlong takes personal responsibility for the delivery, but shudders with the memory of the troubling time he’d last had there, when he was approached by a girl asking him to help her escape.
As Christmas celebrations get underway and Bill spends quality time with his family, he cannot stop thinking about the girl at the convent or his own past. Bill slowly begins to grasp the enormity of the local convent's heartless treatment of unmarried mothers and their babies. His heart suspects a dark truth about the convent that rings in a similar tone to the plight of his mother, and in time, he is inspired to act. His determination and quiet heroism is hopeful yet haunting as he confronts the truth of one of Ireland's infamous Magdalene laundries.
Small Things Like These is a poignant, tender novel that will appeal to readers of small town and rural fiction, human interest stories and historical fiction. It really is one of those books that everyone should read.
Overall reaction: