Small Things Like These: Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2022

Small Things Like These is a novella by award-winning Irish author, Claire Keegan which can be easily read in one sitting. In December 1985, in the little Irish town of New Ross, coal and timber merchant, William Furlong delivers a load of fuel to convent next door to St Margaret’s school, where two of his daughters are taught. Sister Carmel being absent, he opens the chapel door to find a group of young women on hands and knees, polishing the floors, one of whom begs him to take her away. He has heard, and perhaps dismissed, the rumours about the convent’s training school for girls, that girls in trouble are made to work in the laundries. He gets on with his job. Then, on the icy Sunday before Christmas, he has another load of coal to deliver to the convent. He’s a little early, and none of the Good Shepherd nuns are at the coal shed to meet him, but eager to get on, he unlocks the shed. What he finds, or actually whom, is a shock, and despite the ready cover story that the Mother Superior provides, her smoothly convincing act, William is disturbed. Her veiled threat towards the future of his daughters and his business, should he make any sort of fuss about what he has encountered, while it is echoed by his wife and others in the town, disturbs him even more. “…you want to get on in life, there’s things you have to ignore, so you can keep on” William cannot forget that he was born to an unwed mother in 1946, and his mother had only escaped the same fate as those girls he has seen through the Christian generosity of a Protestant widow. But for Mrs Wilson, where might William have ended up? Can he really tolerate the status quo? “He found himself asking was there any point in being alive without helping one another? Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror?” Keegan deftly portrays a hard-working man who is charitable and generous, both with what he has and his opinions of those around him. Her descriptive prose easily captures the setting and the mindset of society at that time, the power of the Catholic Church in small Irish towns. This powerful little tale demonstrates just how the Magdalen laundries were able to persist in a first-world country until four years short of the twenty-first Century and illustrates the saying that evil persists where good men fail to act. An uplifting story. This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Grove Atlantic.

Small Things Like These is a poignant and quietly powerful tale of courage, compassion and standing up for what is right, in the face of powerful institutional pressure to turn away. It's the lead-up to Christmas 1985 in the Irish town where Bill Furlong lives with his wife and five daughters. While many in the community are suffering from the effects of a struggling economy, the Furlong family are comparatively comfortable, thanks to their thriving wood and coal supply business. Tender-hearted Bill often extends charity to those who are struggling to make ends meet, especially with the cold winter closing in. In the course of his work, Bill makes delivery to the local Catholic convent, associated with both a home for single mothers, a commercial laundry and the private school his daughters attend. On one such visit, he discovers a shivering teenage girl locked within the coal storage hutch. Bill frees the girl and escorts her to the Convent's Mother Superior, but is troubled by the undercurrents he feels and the girl's entreaties for him to find out what has happened to her baby. Bill feels echoes from his own personal history, as his own mother found herself "in trouble" when she fell pregnant with him, but was fortunate to be taken in by her employer, Miss Wilson, rather than exiled to the home for single mothers. Despite several warnings he receives from townsfolk, and his own wife's suggestion that he would be wise to turn a blind eye to what goes on at the convent, Bill finds the courage to stand by his moral convictions, despite facing the ire of the all-powerful Catholic church. Exploring the horrifying history of the Magdalen Laundries and other systemic abuses carried out by the Catholic church in Ireland, Claire Keegan weaves a rather beautiful narrative against an ugly and troubling backdrop. It's an unusual premise for a Christmas fable, but it works. I'd highly recommend Small Things Like These as a short but meaningful read, which will be appreciated by readers who are fascinated by personal stories and thought-provoking scenarios. I'll be adding a copy to my own small collection of Christmas classics, to be brought out and savoured every year during Advent.

I really enjoyed this book but was so disappointed that there were only 7 chapters and I paid £21.99! FAR too expensive ...