I have adored Irish literature ever since I read the incredible Milkman by Anna Burns, which I would recommend to anyone.
So when Claire Keegan was shortlisted for the Booker Prize it was like dangling a carrot.
I read, or should I say devoured, Small Things Like These on a lazy Sunday afternoon, and it was well worth it.
This book is a short read but will stay with you for so much longer.
The first sentences of the novel establish a sense of time and place as the town of New Ross moves from a bright, yellow-leaved Autumn to a bleak, rainy Winter.
The contrast of the crisp Autumn leaves with the dark-as-stout river creates a pathetic fallacy, as the description moves from hope and abundance to depressing times that must be endured.
“In October there were yellow trees.
“Then the clocks went back the hour and the long November winds came in and blew, and stripped the trees bare.
“In the town of New Ross, chimneys threw out smoke which fell away and drifted off in hairy, drawn-out strings before dispersing along the quays, and soon the River Barrow, dark as stout, swelled up with rain.” (Chapter 1, Page 6)
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.
It is 1985 in a small Irish town, during the weeks leading up to Christmas.
Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man, faces his busiest season.
He is making ends meet, delivering fuel in the form of coals and logs to the townspeople.
Bill is living a quiet, unglamorous life in Ireland; he has a happy life with his wife and five daughters.
They have enough to eat and aren’t living on credit, although the town has known hard times; factories are closing up and people are being laid off.
One day, near Christmas, Bill makes a delivery at the convent when he discovers something that doesn’t sit quite right with him; and he asks himself hard questions.
If you had the chance to do the right thing, no matter the cost, would you do it?
Or would you, like a good majority of people, take the easy road and turn a blind eye to wrongdoing, injustice or outright cruelty?
It’s much easier to follow the crowd and avoid going against the powers that be.
Especially if speaking up might risk putting yourself or your loved ones in jeopardy in some way.
But would you be able to live with yourself if you didn’t?
Could you rest easy each night?
This novel is a damning indictment of the morally bankrupt Catholic Church’s cruel judgementalism of girls and women who got pregnant outside wedlock; their taken babies, their enslavement, and exploitation in the laundries.
It’s an initially quiet story setting the spotlight on the harrowing experiences of young fallen girls in Ireland and how power structures and social control make doing the right thing difficult.
This book is a work of fiction but inspired by The Magdalen Laundries in Ireland, also known as Magdalene asylums, which operated from the 18th to the 20th centuries.
They were run ostensibly to house fallen women and many girls and women lost their babies.
It is estimated about 30,000 women were imprisoned in the laundries that finally closed in 1996; records were destroyed or made inaccessible.
It was recently recognised and reported that the Mother and Baby Home Commission Report found that 9,000 children died in just 18 of the institutions investigated.
These institutions were run and financed by the Catholic Church.
Small Things Like These is a beautifully written and poignant book, and the ending left me with a flicker of hope in humankind.
I admire the way Claire Keegan writes; simple yet elegant, with wonderful imagery.
“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” – Aesop
Julie Chessman – The Bookshop Umina