It was a December of crows. People had never seen the likes of them, gathering in black batches on the outskirts of town then coming in, walking the streets, cocking their heads and perching, impudently, on whatever lookout post that took their fancy, scavenging for what was dead, or diving in mischief for anything that looked edible along the roads before roosting at night in the huge old trees around the convent.
The convent was a powerful-looking place on the hill at the far side of the river with black, wide-open gates, and a host of tall, shining windows, facing the town."

Bill Furlong is a decent man, risen from a lowly station in life to being a respected pillar-of-the-community sort. Not well off, mind, but a coal and wood supplier who keeps several folks employed, his customers supplied, and his family fed, a George Bailey sort, but from a much less settled foundation. There is never much left over, and always a new cost looming on the horizon. In the course of making his rounds he sees something that presents a powerful moral challenge. The story is Furlong’s struggle to decide, stay silent, or do something.

1985 is a grim time in New Ross. Ireland is in the midst of a long recession. Despairing of ever finding work, people are emigrating in droves, to England, to America, to wherever work can be had. Those who remain hold little hope for any near relief. Those with work know that they could be laid off in a heartbeat. Those running businesses know that their continued survival depends on the continued demand of their customers, and the customers’ ability to pay. Those without work drain their savings, survive on the dole, or what charity they can find. Too many, employed or not, drown their fears in drink. Keegan captures the bleak tone of the time.

"...the dole queues were getting longer and there were men out there who couldn’t pay their ESB bills, living in houses no warmer than bunkers, sleeping in their coats. Women, on the first Friday of every month, lined up at the post office wall with shopping bags, waiting to collect their children’s allowances. And farther out the country, he’d known cows left bawling to be milked because the man who had their care had upped, suddenly, and taken the boat to Fishguard. Once, a man from St Mullins got a lift into town to pay his bill, saying that they’d had to sell the car as they couldn’t get a wink of sleep knowing what was owing, that the bank was coming down on them. And early one morning, Furlong has seen a young schoolboy eating from a chip bag that had been thrown down on the street the night before."

Christmas is coming, and one might wonder if that starving boy was a descendant of Tiny Tim’s. Keegan even summons A Christmas Carol to mind, noting that, as a boy, Furlong had received the book for Christmas.

He had had a difficult start to life, raised by a single mother, his father not known to him. Luckily for them, a well-to-do local woman, Mrs Wilson, took in mother and son, employing mom to work in the house. Things could have been a lot worse. Like many other nations, Ireland was host to a network of Magdalene Laundries. These were institutions run by the Catholic Church, with the complicity of the Irish government. Young women who became pregnant were often cast out of their communities, their families even, and these enterprises took them in. Reports eventually emerged revealing the abuses these girls and young women endured, often being forced to give away their babies, living in degrading conditions, essentially forced laborers in church-state workhouses. Thousands of infants died there, and many of their mothers as well. New Ross was one of the places where a Magdalene laundry was run. It is one of the reasons Keegan chose to set her story there. This is not a tale about these laundries, per se, but one of those constitutes the immediate and very considerable dark force that Bill Furlong is thinking about taking on. While delivering coal to the convent, he sees something he was not supposed to see. To act or not to act, that is the question.

"Why were the things that were closest so often the hardest to see?"

The language of this novel, the imagery is powerfully effective, celestial even. I felt a need to read a lot of this book out loud. (trying to avoid spoiling it with my terribly fake Irish accent) There is a rhythm, a musicality to the writing that propels its powerful imagery towards the intended targets.

The passage quoted at the top of this review offers a sense not only of a grim time and place, but of the hostile force of the nuns, priests, and the Church, as embodied by the crows. The state, participant in the Magdalene miseries, is given passing notice when a local pol parachutes into town for a Christmas-tree-lighting, if it is possible to parachute in while riding a Mercedes and wearing a rich man’s coat. This is a town that is not being well looked after by the authorities.

"When she was 17, she went to New Orleans. “I got an opportunity to go and stay with a family there, and then I wound up going to university. A double major in political science and English literature.”
She remembers well what Ireland was like the year she left.
“I really wanted to get out. It was 1986. Ann Lovett had just died. I felt the darkness that is in Small Things Like These. I felt that atmosphere of unemployment, and being trapped maybe. And things not looking so good for women.
"My parents used to go dancing, and I used go with them, down to the pub. I remember everybody getting really drunk at the bar on a Sunday night.
"I remember looking at all the men at the bar – it was pretty much all men at the bar – and they were getting drunk and saying they couldn’t bear the thought of going back to work in the morning. And then others would say they didn’t have any work in the morning". - from the Independent interview

When she returned home with her degree, Keegan sent out 300 resumes and did not get a nibble. Erin go Bragh.

The harsh times have not driven from people in New Ross the ability to want things, needed or not. Furlong’s wife, Eileen, wants a proper, going-away vacation, as well as some nice things seen in a shop window. His children have small, mostly manageable desires. The people in town want an end to economic doldrums, some reason to stay around instead of emigrating. The residents of the convent want something more significant. Furlong is in dire need of a new truck to replace the one his business relies on, and which is nearing its last gasp. He also wants to know who his father was.

"Of late, he was inclined to imagine another life, elsewhere, and wondered if this was not something in his blood; might his own father not have been one of those who had upped, suddenly, and taken the boat for England."

He is no saint, but workaholic Furlong has that rare capacity to look inside himself critically, consider his life, his actions, in light of his values, even recognize where he might have stepped away from the moral line he believes in following. He had opted to ignore wrongs he had seen before, but for this father of five girls, and son of a single mother, this is a tough one to let pass. However, there are powerful, and insidious forces arrayed against his better angels. He is repeatedly warned, when he mentions his concerns, that crossing the Church could be extremely costly.

The cold of the season will make you shiver and want to add another layer as you read. Some Irish coffee might help as well. Will Furlong cross that bridge and do something or let what he knows sink into nothingness in the dark, frigid waters of the Barrow River below? You will want to know, and will read on until you do.

Keegan is mostly known as a short-story writer. She has won many awards for her work, which is marked by compactness, showing what needs to be shown to tell her tale. Do not dismiss this novel for its brevity. Small Things Like These is huge! You may not need to prepare a manger with fresh hay, but I would definitely make room for this novel in your collection this holiday season. It is an evocative, beautiful, moving novel that deserves to become a Christmas classic.

"As they carried on along and met more people Furlong did and did not know, 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?"

Review posted – November 12, 2021

Publication date – November 30, 2021


I received an e-ARE of Small Things Like These from Grove Press in return for a fair review, and a few lumps of coal. Thanks, folks, and thanks to Netgalley for facilitating. Bless you, every one.

For the full review, with proper formatting and links, please have a look on my site, Cootsreviews.com, or on Goodreads.

<b>Small Things Like These</b> by Claire Keegan is described by the publisher as  <i>" A story about family and love, set in a small town in Ireland, it has at its heart a good man, Bill Furlong, father of five girls, who, when faced with a difficult choice, must try to do the right thing.</i>

I could not have described it better myself.   Bill, more commonly known as Furlong, is a timber and coal merchant busily trying to fill all his orders in the pre Christmas rush.    In almost no time readers get the sense of his goodness, of the love he has for his wife and daughters.   He's a hard working man who seems to be spending much of his time mulling over his memories of  growing up.    He was raised without a father but he and his mother had been taken in and looked after by Mrs Wilson a wealthy lady who cared for, and helped raise him to be the man he is today.   Perhaps because of his own history he was less able to turn a blind eye to the goings on at the convent, to the treatment of the young girls incarcerated there.

This book though fiction was inspired by the many stories and haunting statistics surrounding the Magdalen Laundries.    What surprised me most was the way the villagers would gossip about what they suspected was happening but none seemed willing to intervene.   Even Bill's own wife did not want to risk the business they received from the convent by questioning what was clearly happening.   The story raised all kinds of questions in my mind about the lack of morals and, it seemed to me, the hypocrisy of the church.    

This book was set in the 80's but the last of the Magdalen Laundries was closed in 1996 and an apology eventually issued in 2013 to the many thousands of young girls and the babies that were stolen.

It was a very short book, easy to read and though the story itself only hinted at the situation it brought the Magsalen Laundries to mind.  My thanks to Grove Atlantic and Netgalley for the opportunity of reading this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review which it was my pleasure to provide.

3.5 stars on Goodreads

Small Things Like These may be small in size but it's a book (a novella) with large and important themes. In this beautifully written and powerful novella, Keegan raises fundamental questions about the importance of doing what's right. It neither takes her long to wrap the reader into Furlong's character (or perhaps it's more accurate to say that she infuses Furlong's character into the reader) nor does she hit the reader repeatedly with the evils of the Magdalene Laundries and the nuns and other church personnel who were responsible for operating them and/or turning a blind eye to them. When Furlong, now in his early 40s, discovers one of the Magdalene girls, he is transported back to his own beginnings of an "unknown father," and it is only at this time that he realizes the identity of his biological father. Now, he is confronted with the dilemma of whether and how he should proceed: should he continue to leave the girl he came across in her intolerable situation or risk upsetting the fine balance in his own family consisted of his wife and five daughters? Keegan has written a gem of a book to which I will return again and again.

A small perfect gem of a novella, a whole world distilled into just a few pages, compact, understated but so powerful, with not a word wasted and every word precisely and carefully chosen. Claire Keegan is a wonderful writer and this is a wonderful book. It’s set in a small unnamed Irish town in 1985. Bill Furlong is a coal and timber merchant and is making his pre-Christmas deliveries when he comes across a young woman, Sarah, locked in the coal shed of the local Catholic convent. She’s been there all night, presumably as a punishment, and she is cold, hungry and asking for her baby. It becomes clear that the nuns run one of Ireland’s infamous Magdalene laundries. Bill is a good man, a hard-working family man, the moral heart of the story, and he wants to do the right thing. He must choose between remaining complicit in the cruelty that the whole town is aware of but chooses to ignore, or to follow his conscience, which could have far-reaching consequences for his family. Keegan’s restraint in her narrative only amplifies Bill’s dilemma. The book is at once a compelling and moving tale and an indictment of the Catholic Church’s heartlessness in its treatment of these young women. A must read.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5/5. If you buy only one book this holiday season, THIS is the one I want you to get. This novella is a quiet masterpiece. It will likely become one of my all-time favorites.

The story follows Bill Furlong, a timber and coal salesman in 1980s Ireland, at Christmastime. While making his deliveries, Furlong makes a terrible, heartbreaking discovery. Should he follow his conscience and act, likely to the detriment of his own family, or should he mind his own business? Is there really such a thing as an innocent bystander who has the capability to help, but doesn’t?

In just 128 pages, Keegan explores these and other “meaning of life” type questions in the context of the Magdalene asylums that existed in Ireland (and elsewhere) until the mid 1990s. Keegan’s writing style is quiet and contemplative, yet the novella is still packed with so much emotion. I am so happy to have read this beautiful piece and give it my very highest recommendation. It will surely be one of my favorites of the year, and possibly of all time.

Thank you to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Maybe I'm just not used to short stories and novellas but I spent much of the time wondering what had made me request this book from netgalley, then realised I was almost at the end!

I think I get it? But I'm not certain. It has made me want to know more about the Magdalene laundries of Ireland.

I guess it's a story about discovering how much you're willing to do when push comes to shove and about the atrocities that humans will inflict on one another and the small things that can make a world of difference.

**Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for giving me access to this book in return for an honest review

A small but perfect book, holding out the possibility that one person's actions against injustice and pain can make a difference. A message of hope and quiet courage in a dark world.
Thank you to netgalley and Grove Atlantic for an advance copy of this book

Small Things Like These is exactly what I look for in fiction – it pulls me in to the world created and I forget that I’m reading a book. Bill Furlong lives in 1980s rural Ireland with his wife and five daughters, where he goes about his business in much the same way every day. The beginning of the story has a very homey feel because of the daily rituals, and because the story is set around Christmas, the seasonal traditions gave me a feeling of nostalgia.

Bill has some ghosts in his closet from the past, and this adds an interesting dimension to his character. He also comes face to face with a moral crisis, and here the story takes a heartbreaking turn. I discovered after finishing the short novel that this is based on true events in Ireland’s history. The author did a masterful job of creating an authentic fictional story around a historical tragedy. The Note on the Text at the end of the book puts the story in context.

I adore Claire Keegan’s writing style. I believe this is her first novel, and I will eager look for her next. Thank you to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for the digital review copy of this book.

ill Furlong is a coal merchant in Wexford Ireland. It’s Christmas time in 1985, and he leads a pleasant if hard-working life with his wife and five daughters. The lead up to Christmas is depicted wonderfully, both in Furlong’s home and at work. I loved the traditional preparations included like making the Christmas cake, having been brought up in a similar background.

The nostalgia was intense with this one. The evocation of the town and its people was masterful. It’s a typical small Irish town but has the shadow of the convent looming. Within its walls, young girls and women are being mistreated and the complicit silence resonates around the town. Furlong finds himself looking towards his past and thinks about how our small decisions affect everything.

A beautiful book, thought-provoking and perfect for the run up to Christmas. Going on my list to gift to people for sure.

I received an ARC of this novella from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A man born out of wedlock is faced with a dilemma when he comes into contact with a woman who causes him to ponder what life could have been like for his late mother.

This is a book that will stay with you long after you finish reading it. The main character, Bill, lives in the same small town in Ireland where he grew up, with his wife and five daughters. He works selling coal, and they have a happy and uncomplicated life. The book focuses on the end of the year in 1985, as Bill, going about his ordinary life and preparing for Christmas, comes across a troubling situation when delivering an order to one of his clients that triggers memories of his complicated childhood. Bill must decided whether to do nothing, as he is being urged to do by his wife and others in town, or take action that will upset powerful forces and risk his own comfort.

This is a powerful book. Highly recommended!

Bill Furlong is a hard working family man living in a small Irish town in 1985. Born to an unwed teenage mother in 1946, he was fortunate that her employer let her keep her baby and stay on the farm where she worked. A coal merchant, Bill provides for his wife and five daughters, and helps out those who can't afford to pay him as much as he can. It's almost Christmas, but times are tough and many of his customers can barely afford to feed themselves, let alone buy gifts for their children and pay for fuel to stave off the freezing chills of winter.

The town is very much still under the thrall of the Church and Bill delivers wood and coal to the nuns who live in the convent next to the Catholic school. It's while he's making an early delivery one morning that he finds a young woman in a terrible state. Not only does it open his eyes to what happens to unmarried mothers sent to the convent to work in the laundry until their babies are born. but also leaves him feeling very unsettled and reflecting on his own beginnings. Ultimately he decides he must do what his conscience tells him is right and humane even though it is sure to land him in a world of trouble.

This novella might be short but it tells a powerful tale about a disgraceful time in the history of the Catholic Church in Ireland. It's hard to believe Ireland's Magdalen laundries where unmarried mothers were forced to work while the Church took their babies away for adoption, were still operating until 1996. Simply told in gorgeous prose it's poignant and compassionate, while acknowledging the complicity of the nuns and population that allowed this practice to continue.

A small book (really a novella) about a big topic. A kind-hearted man discovers something disturbing at the convent/school in town and his world is turned upside down. Based on the true story of Irish homes for unwed mothers and what happened to the girls and babies. The writing is excellent, the story engaging and touching, my only complaint -- it was too short. I would have loved to see it go on. But sometimes short & sweet is the best.

So I thought this would be an uplifting Christmas novella and it was not. I felt ground down by the time I got to the end of the book. I realize now that Keegan was writing about something that was pretty horrific in Ireland’s history (Magdalene Laundries in Ireland) that I had not heard or read about before now. There was a lot that felt like it was going over my head while reading, and it didn’t help that the protagonist of the novella, Bill Furlong, seemed to just be joyless through the whole book. There’s a vibe of now his life has meaning thing at the end and I don’t know. Maybe this should have been longer. Because I doubt that what happened next is going to be great for Bill or his family.

“Small Things Like These” follows Bill Furlong. It’s 1985 and Christmas is almost upon what seems to be a dying village in Ireland. Bill is wrestling with unhappiness and his mother’s past. When he comes upon a young girl and realizes that something is wrong, he can’t put her out of his mind. The book leads to some discoveries not only about the young girl, but Bill’s past as well.

So Bill. I don’t know. I just could not get a handle on him. It takes a bit, but you start to see him dissatisfied with everything. He’s married with several kids and seems to be questioning if getting married and having children was enough. We know that the village is going through a bad downturn, and his wife is hoping for some new windows and other things, but Bill wonders why are they struggling. What is the meaning of life is pretty much this whole book. I can’t speak to anyone else in this book. We just have Bill’s thoughts about his wife, his children, his frustration with things, him going over his mother’s past and his still unknown father and how that shaped his life. And we get his perspective on a wealthy widow who apparently provided (some) support towards his mother and him.

There is not too much dialogue, just Bill’s feelings and thoughts. And when he comes upon the young girl and realizes that something is wrong at the convent the book just turns into something else. I had no idea about the Magdalene Laundries and afterwards read about them and felt horrified, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_Laundries_in_Ireland I think that is why the book threw me a bit. Reading about Bill’s dissatisfaction and then it just delves into a pretty terrible historical period in Ireland.

Even though this book is set during the Christmas holidays, it feels like it can be any day of the year. The whole book felt bleak. I thought it be a great Christmas book which is why I got it via NetGalley to read it prior to the run up of Christmas.

The ending I know was supposed to be uplifting. But my first thought was that things were probably not going to go great for Bill and I worry about what will happen to him and his family.

Small Things Like These is a beautiful story filled with joy, love, compassion and loving humanity no matter where you come from. This Christmas story gives a lesson to learn and such a pleasure to read. I absolutely love this story!

This is a beautiful novella about an ordinary man who stumbles upon something cruel that his own past experience means he cannot ignore.
Set in Ireland in the 1980s, it shines a tiny but bright light upon the practise of pregnant young women being sent 'away' to convents to have their babies and if the baby survived (and recent reports in the Irish press indicate that this was not a given) the baby was put up for adoption whether the young woman wanted that or not. Of course, the nuns were the perpetrators of this but not without the silent support of families and society in general. That it was still happening in the 1980s is pretty shocking but the telling of this story is subtle and all the sadder for that.
The end left me wondering what happened next and I've thought about the story and main character since finishing the book.

What a fabulously written novella! I loved Furlong and what a story of paying it forward. This was beautiful in every way. The writing was descriptive and engaging and the narrative just grabbed you. I could see this being read in high schools not only for the literature but also the lesson it tells.

A lovely Irish novella with a dark story lifted by the humanity of one man, Bill Furlong. Based on the true circumstances of the Magdalen Laundry, where poor unwed mothers were used as slave labor and many died.

Bill Furlong was born to an unmarried mother. Luckily she was employed by a compassionate woman who kept her employed and didn't judge. Bill is grown now, married with five daughters. His wife, like much of the village, lives a bit in fear of being judged and of the power of the church in their town. She doesn't want to do anything to endanger their life.

While making a coal delivery, Bill finds a young new mother locked up in a room and she begs him to help her escape. The sisters quickly try to gloss over her and Bill is invited to tea and quietly set straight. The thought of the young woman gnaws at him, and in the final pages, Bill performs an act of conscience and humanity, shouldering the risk to him and his family. This is a lovely story of redemption. Thanks to the publisher and to Net Galley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

<i>Thank you to the publisher for an early copy of this book via NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.</i>

It's nearing Christmas of 1985. Bill Furlong, father of five daughters, works delivering coal and wood in the town of New Ross, Ireland. He and his wife, Eileen, live a contented life due to their fiscal responsibility and devout ways. But Bill encounters something that not only shakes up his faith but his outlook on life.

As the son of an unwed mother who was graciously taken in by an elderly woman, Bill is not unused to kindnesses. However, when life gets tough it's easy to worry and stress about getting by and neglect the gifts we can give to others. Bill faces this when he has a chance encounter with a young girl at the local convent. From there he grapples with his faith as its lived out in the little actions we take each day, how our words only mean anything when strengthened by our deeds.

Having never read Claire Keegan before, I did not know what to expect from this story. But it was quite a powerful novella! I can see why she's loved for her short stories. She doesn't over explain, giving just enough detail and putting you in the headspace of Bill in a way that's both disarming and empathy-inducing. It's a perfect little book to curl up with on a cold day and read in one sitting. That's what I did and I absolutely loved it.

While the moral or lesson of the story might not be groundbreaking, it's a beautiful reminder to help those who cannot help themselves. And for those who are not familiar with Ireland's history of the Magdalen laundries, this is just the tip of the iceberg. This is definitely more focused on the personal effects the institutions had on lives, rather than a historical explanation and overview of everything they did. But Keegan manages to make the harrowing treatment of young woman by the laundries feel so real in such a short amount of time.

This will be released here in the US on November 30th and I'd highly recommend checking this out when it's available. A beautiful story of faith in action and the seemingly small choices we can make that have a profound effect, not only on ourselves but on the lives of those we touch.

Short, and beautiful in it's simplicity. This novel was the breath of fresh air that I was looking for. It is perfect for this time of year.