Claire Keegan
Claire Keegan’s novella, Small Things Like These, is a quiet read that packs a powerful punch.
The setting is a small Irish town in 1985, just before Christmas. Bill Furlong, the local coal merchant, is happily married and a loving and gentle father to his five daughters. The son of an unwed mother who worked as a live-in maid, he was raised in the home of his mother’s employer, a kind, generous woman who helped him gain access to middle-class status. Bill is hard-working and compassionate. He makes his coal deliveries to homes in the community and is appreciated and respected by the residents.
Just before Christmas, Bill makes a delivery to the local convent that functions as a Magdalen Laundry. Although the towns’ people suspect horrific abuses lurking in the convent, they choose to ignore them. The ostensible purpose of Magdalen Laundries, the last one of which closed down in 1996, was to rehabilitate young girls who were pregnant and/or fallen on hard times. Instead of a charitable haven, these institutions functioned as prisons, forcing girls into virtual slavery. Exploited and abused, the girls’ labor generated income for the convent’s laundry business. It is not known how many girls and infants died in these facilities as few records have been kept.
Bill encounters one of these young girls locked in the coal house when he delivers coal to the convent. She is shivering and barefoot. She reveals her baby was taken away from her and she has no knowledge of his whereabouts. Bill returns her to the convent but feels distinctly uneasy about doing so. Thoughts of the young girl and her dire predicament continue to haunt him. He decides to take matters into his own hands even though he is cautioned his decision might have negative repercussions on his family, especially his daughters’ ability to attend the Catholic school.
The novella does not elaborate on the horrors of the Magdalen Laundries. Instead, the focus is on Bill as he goes through the motions of the day, all the while haunted by the image of the young girl. He draws comparisons between the young girl and his own mother had her employer thrown her out for her illegitimate pregnancy. The tension slowly but powerfully builds up as Bill struggles with an unsettling situation he cannot ignore.
Bill’s response to injustice unfolds in powerful, lyrical diction. The details of small things and meaningful gestures accumulate as he struggles with his decision. The dialogue captures the beauty, pulse, and rhythm of the Irish spoken words. This gem of a novel, with its sensitive and courageous protagonist and its quiet, powerful diction will leave a lingering and profound impression.
Highly recommended.