Book Review - Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan

Just when it’s coming to the end of the year, and I’m beginning to think of my favourite novels from the past twelve months, this absolute beauty of a book from Claire Keegan streaks in straight at number one.

Bill Furlong

It’s 1985 and Bill Furlong is a coal merchant in a town in the South East of Ireland, married with five daughters. The weather is bitterly cold and it’s coming up to Christmas, and Bill is plodding along with the drudgery of his day to day existence, making his deliveries. One of these is to the local convent, where he makes a discovery that forces him into making a decision that may have repercussions for both him and his family. He finds moral courage at a time when the local community lived in fear of the Catholic Church.

Novella

‘Small things like these’ is a novella, as it comes in 128 perfect pages. I’m trying not to use the word ‘perfect’ too often in this book review, but it’s hard not to. The writing is just so elegant and to the point. There isn’t a word wasted. Ireland is perfectly observed - there’s a scene in the chapel which is as close to my own experience of those times as I’ve ever read.

‘Small things like these’ made me angry, again, at how the Catholic Church treated young women. I realise these were different times and the past is a foreign country, and it’s difficult now to realise how suffocating and in thrall to superstition Ireland was, but it feels like such an act of collective neglect. Anger at how the state turned a blind eye or worked in tandem with them, exerting control over the people. An inner rage at how these people commanded so much authority and the misery they inflicted on people. Of course things were changing as the church began to lose its grip and there is much love and hope in the actions of someone like Bill Furlong.

Small things like these Summary

I have previously read ‘Walk the Blue fields’, a masterful short story collection from Claire Keegan some years ago. I’m not sure how they escaped me, but I was delighted to see another three titles that I have already ordered from my local library. One my favourite Irish writers is John McGahern and I really feel that Claire Keegan is of the same literary lineage. I also thought of Donal Ryan whilst reading this work; writing that comes from a place that is both honest and unflinching.

‘Small things like these’ is a beautiful, heartbreaking book, absolutely sublime. I’ll wait a few days and read it again.

*Update Nov 23 - This book has been nominated for the both the Rathbones folio prize and the Booker in ‘22, won the Orwell prize for political fiction in the same year. But probably more importantly, I’ve heard so many people talking about it - it’s had such momentum and word of mouth talk, which is a rare thing these days.

Book review - Small things like these by Claire Keegan

128 pages, Hardcover

November 30, 2021 by Grove Press

Are we the ones left behind by those who weave cords that bind?

They draw the marrow from our very Bones and we in turn, turn on our own.

Stood in line in horsehair shirts we queued up to eat the dirt, We traded lumps on narrow streets, Can't bite the hand when you've no teeth.

And it's a standing ovation for the shadow of a stone As we dig into the soil beneath our homes. The future's further day-by-day as our fathers turn away And leave us clinging to a mother who eats her own.

The granite gaze upon us now, a skulking mass recalling how To plant a secret and tell no lies For now we own those same stone eyes.

And it's the last gasp of wonder for a cretin on a throne As our daughter's sneak away across the foam, The future's just a thing we say to keep the sordid past at bay Still we cling on to the mother who eats her own.

We are the ones left behind in swaddling bound with bailing twine, They stole the marrow from our very Bones and we in turn, turned on our own.

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