128 pages
English language
Published Dec. 3, 2021 by Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated.
Shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize
"A hypnotic and electrifying Irish tale that transcends country, transcends time." —Lily King, New York Times bestselling author of Writers & Lovers
Small Things Like These is award-winning author Claire Keegan's landmark new novel, a tale of one man's courage and a remarkable portrait of love and family
It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.
Already an international bestseller, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers.
A penetrating snapshot of Irish life under the suffocating weight of Catholic dominance. But true moral strength cannot be suppressed, and every small act erodes that edifice. Beautifully crafted.
There's a very old Jewish teaching which says "whoever saves a life, saves an entire world." This gentle and reflective novella, in which nothing much happens and yet lives change, is a version of this, told through the details of the quiet life of a man in an Irish village.
this slim but tightly packed novel has more indictments than you'd expect: of the Catholic church, of capitulation, of women, of class in itself. It is, indeed, shocking that the Magdalena laundries were still in use in the 80's and 90's (and I've seen Peter Mullan movie!) and this book brings it home that one class of people is not oppressed without the tacit complicity of the whole. "There but for the Grace of God" can be a shorthand for gratitude and silence, or empathy and action. It is reminiscent of the films where local Germans were brought in to see the pile of shoes and hair in the death camps and they all cried: We didn't know!
well, we know. we always know.
