I enjoyed this book. It is short but was interesting and sad. I think it's important to learn more about how these poor girls were treated.

An initially quiet story setting the spotlight on the harrowing experiences of young “fallen” girls in Ireland, and how difficult power structures and social control make doing the right thing
’Where does thinking get us?’ she said. ‘All thinking does is bring you down.’
She was touching the pearly buttons on her nightdress, agitated.
‘If you want to get on in life, there’s things you have to ignore, so you can keep on.’

Expertly done, from a kind of pedestrian, meandering seeming historical novella to an examination of what integrity means, engaging with a history that effected the lives of 30.000 girls in Ireland.
More background on the subject matter can be found here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magda...

Claire Keegan sketches the life of coal merchant Furlong, married to Eileen and their five daughters.
It’s only people with no children who can afford to be careless is a quote quite early in the book and with the economy tanking there is enough to be concerned about. Village life is expertly conjured, but when the clearly shady business of the nuns comes into focus Small Things Like These starts to shine.

At my job we have a core value called "Act with integrity" and one of the examples included to describe the value is "Doing the right thing, especially when its difficult". Furlong is a perfect illustration of the struggle this lofty goal brings with it when he is confronted with a young girl mistreated by the nuns: ‘Ah, I’ll not,’ Furlong stepped back - as though the step could take him back into the time before this.

The trauma is understated, not explicit, but very much something that I felt as a reader, for instance in this short sentence:
She looked at the window and took a breath and began to cry, the way those unused to any type of kindness do when it’s at first or after a long time again encountered.

An important book that kind of reminds me in feel of the velvet iron fist method Kazuo Ishiguro applies so often - 4.5 stars rounded down, highly recommended!

This was a poignant, stunning novella that was written in gorgeous prose. The author sets the story in a small Irish town in the 1980s and immerses one in a vivid picture of the town's economic decline. Her words evoke a strong visual sense and the depth of the characters impart strong emotions. The Catholic Church holds strong control over village life.

Bill Furlong is a small business owner who delivers coal and kindling wood throughout the community. This is grimy, time-consuming work, but important during the cold winter months leading up to Christmas when homes are chilly and damp. He is a good, kind man and far from wealthy. He takes comfort in the thought that he is providing an easier life for his wife and their 5 talented and well-behaved daughters than many of his poverty-stricken friends and neighbours.

With Christmas approaching, he reflects uneasily on his early life, and how it could have been so much worse. His unmarried 16-year-old mother became pregnant by an unknown father. She was kindly taken in by a widowed war pensioner for whom she worked. She died when Bill was 12 and he was raised within that home. He recalls a past disappointment at Christmas time, and how he was tormented at school, but grateful he and his mother avoided the alternatives had they not been in a decent, respectable home.

One cold, frosty day, Bill is delivering a load of coal to the nearby local convent and Magdalen Laundry run by the Catholic Church. He finds a traumatized girl, dirty and shivering and locked in the coal shed. She begs Bill to take her away. The nuns give the impression of being concerned for the girl and suggest she got locked in by accident while playing. Bill meets some of the other girls and becomes concerned for their welfare.

In fact, these laundries were church-run homes for young pregnant girls who were treated with disdain and forced into slavery in what were actually workhouses. Their babies were sold to adoptive parents or died in infancy and many of the young mothers failed to survive the harsh treatment and psychological damage that ensued. These homes for wayward girls existed all over Ireland for many years and the last was not shut down until the late 1990s. About the same time, the last of the cruel church-run residential schools for native children was closed in Canada.

What Bill observed and his suspicions weigh heavily on his mind and heart. He now confronts his past. His wife urges him to forget what he saw and to concentrate on the upbringing of his daughters. With Christmas almost upon him, Bill is stressed and goes for long walks struggling with a crisis of conscience. He makes a heroic decision, knowing that making small steps of courage will have repercussions in the complicit community that shields the wrongdoings of the church.
This was a powerful story that packed so much thought and emotion into a small book. I would have liked to know more about the outcome of Bill's decision. Highly recommended.
Many thanks to Grove Atlantic for an early copy of this compelling, beautifully written book. My review is on NetGalley and Goodreads and will be copied to Amazon near the time of publication.

This was a very quick read and I think that was the problem I had with this novella. So much more could have been developed; the life and backstory of the girl at the convent, why was she in the coal shed ( punishment?), more of the day to day of Bill and his family. The writing is so beautiful at evoking the cold Christmas season in the town and the people living there that it’s a shame it wasn’t fully fleshed out. I liked the point the author was making about doing the right thing but I just wish there had been more of a story.

Small Things Like These is the second standalone novella by award-winning short story writer Claire Keegan. It tells the story of Bill Furlong, a man born to a single mother in a small Irish town in the 1940s, who now in the 1980s runs his own coal and timber business, and who, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, meets a girl at a Magdalen Laundry whose physical state and predicament concerns him.

With shades of A Christmas Carol, Small Things Like These is the story of a man wrestling with his own morality when doing the right thing means going against the Catholic Church, which has a stranglehold over his town. What I found so affecting about this book was Keegan’s deft touch — her prose reads effortlessly and the horrors of the Magdalen Laundries are elucidated not through graphic, violent descriptions, but in the harrowing small moments of abuse captured. Character and setting are rendered with impressive detail given the scarcity of pages, and I found this to be a great place to start with Keegan, whose backlist I’m keen to explore now.

Thank you to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for the advanced copy provided in exchange for an honest review.

I've often thought that lighting a candle in the darkness reveals two things: the possibility of beauty obscured by the dimness meeting your eyes or the reality of the sudden impact of human horror within human hands.

Small Things Like These has both......

1985 brings hardships to the Irish in the form of long-accustomed cold houses in winter, the scarcity of warm well-fitted coats, the tallies of unpaid bills and banks calling in loans. It's been a time of companies closing and shipyards padlocking their gates. The only answer seems to be in emigrating to London or to parts unknown. And then there are those, with no other options, but to stay.

Claire Keegan introduces us to her main character, Bill Furlong, born in 1946 to an unwed mother on a farm outside of New Ross. His mother was a hard-working employee of Mrs. Wilson who insisted that she and the baby remain at the farm. In the years following, Bill was immediately bullied and ridiculed every time he stepped from the safety of the farm. As always in life, the judgmental winds seem to target anyone who is "the other". His mother died suddenly when Bill was twelve years old. No one ever revealed who his father might be.

But if there was one thing that Bill's mother taught him, it was resilience. Bill managed to start his own truck deliveries as a coal and timber merchant. He went on to marry his wife Eileen and have five talented daughters. We will experience the kindness and compassion that Bill shows, not only to his own family, but to those around him. He seems to pass forward the hand that was extended to him.

Keegan will shift the tone drastically from the cheeriness of an Irish Christmas to the realities of hypocracies on that same rugged soil. Bill will come upon a situation that stuns the eyes and stills the heart. And you can be sure that it is handled directly and impactfully in the hands of the superb Claire Keegan. The greatest pains in this life have been delivered by those in whom we have given our full trust. The charlatans who spew lies from their sainted mouths and whose actions caused death and ever-living anguish to those in their presence.

Small Things Like These is a brief 128 pages of exceptional writing. But Keegan shines a light on the urgent need to never lose sight of the element of good that resides within those who boldly step forward. One step.....small things.......that be the tidal wave at the right time.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Grove Atlantic and to the talented Claire Keegan for the opportunity.

Theres a lot packed into this novella of only 128 pages! There's some historical references about the atrocities of the Catholic Church laundries in Ireland and the moral decision of one man to do the right thing despite the community's blind eye. Not your typical Christmas novel but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Superbly told. One sentence leads into another and suddenly you look up and you're finished. Kudos.

Keegan writes softly but she punches hard. It's a very small thing to close your eyes and look away, very very easy to do. There are consequences of course but with further closing of the eyes these might be ignored as well. What happens when in a few seconds of courage you decide to keep your eyes open and see and furthermore do...........

An ARC gently provided by author/publisher via Netgalley

There’s quite a bit of depth and characterization here, but <i>Small Things Like these</i> is so short that by the time I got into it, it was already over. This novella captures The Christmas Spirit, all wrapped up in one man’s discontent about his paternity, his mundane day-to-day, and the abuse of women at the local covent (this is actually a minor part of the book; I thought it was going to take up a bigger portion). It was a quick but interesting read, but likely forgettable in the long term. I’d check out more (hopefully something longer) from Keegan in the future.

I voluntarily obtained a digital version of this book free from Netgalley and Grove Atlantic in exchange for an honest review.

This was a griping tale of a situation in which I never even knew existed. I think if I had a bit more background on the laundries, I would have better understood the book. I ended up having to do some research on my own to get a perspective on the situation. The writing was well-executed. It was a great reminder that it can be tough to do the right thing when you are personally faced with a tough decision.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in return for an honest review.

This novella is set in 1985 in New Ross, Ireland, which also houses a Magdalene Laundry. The Laundries were run by different orders of nuns of the Roman Catholic Church, housing pregnant women and offering the babies for adoption.

Our narrator is almost 40-year-old Bill Furlong, who owns a business selling and delivering coal and other heating fuels. Bill is an upstanding citizen, married with five daughters, yet there is always something telling him he is not quite as good as everyone else. While Bill grew up in the largest house in town, he was the illegitimate child of a servant and never even knew who his father was. Bill was made fun of by other children and looked down upon by adults. He is grateful for Mrs. Davis, the widowed woman who employed his mother as she was kind and generous. As Bill’s daughters grow up and Christmas approaches, Bill thinks of how his life might have been different. That is really driven home when Bill delivers to the Magdalene Laundry in town, and a young girl pleads with him to take her with him.

The writing is poetically beautiful, the characters have depth, and the story end with an uplifting moment. The theme is compassion, and the issue explored is:

“Was there any point in being alive without helping one another?”

https://candysplanet.wordpress.com/

Such a lovely little story. The plight of the Magdalene girls is so sad, and such a shameful part of Irish history. The story about Bill an illegitimate child whose other mercifully escaped that horror, is sweet, sad and hopeful. If only more people had made such a gesture.

Small Things Like These is set in Ireland in the mid-1980s recession as we follow Bill Furlong through several days approaching Christmas. As the holiday season approaches, Bill reflects on his life, both present and past. Bill's life is pretty ordinary, except when you look closely and really notice things; it's the small things that matter.

I love Claire Keegan's writing. Her details paint a picture and engage our emotions and senses. As in this scene where Bill reflects on scenes from his current Christmas which leads to remembering past Christmases:
"Again, he found himself thinking back to his time out at Wilson's, and reasoned that he'd just had too much time to dwell and had turned sentimental because of all the coloured lights and the music, and the sight of Joan singing with the choir, how she looked like she belonged there, with all the others -- and the scent of the lemon which took him back to his mother at Christmastime in the fine, old kitchen; how she used to put what was left of the lemon into one of the blue jugs with sugar to steep and dissolve overnight and had made cloudy lemonade."

The book is dedicated to the women and children who suffered in Ireland's Magdalen laundries. The subject matter makes this a difficult Christmas story to read, but it is ultimately a heartwarming and hopeful story. Because you can change someone's life for the better. It only takes a small thing.

Thank you to GroveAtlantic for this opportunity to review the #ARC.

Wonderful novella touching upon the infamous Irish laundry girls. The main characters are well written and the harshness of an Irish depression is captured in a few number of pages.

I’m judging the L.A. Times 2020 and 2021 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

I’m still delighted when I open a novel and am overwhelmed with the feeling, I’m entering a story….
“The people, for the most part, unhappily endured the weather: shopkeepers and tradesmen, men and women, in the post office and the dole queue, the mart, the coffee shop and supermarket, the bingo hall, the pubs and the chipper all commented, in their own ways, on the cold and what rain had fallen, asking what was in it—could there be something in it—for who could believe that there, again, was another raw-cold day.”

Gorgeous novel about compassion set in Ireland in the 1980s when a man, making a delivery, is faced by the girls and women being held and forced to work in horrific conditions in the Magdalene Laundries. This book does not go into detail about the abuse but rather focuses on the man and his literal thoughtfulness about others around him and humankind. The writing is breathtaking and, at times, I read it aloud just to deepen my experience of reading the magnificent writing. Pick this one up - it’s a gift. Heartfelt thanks to Faber Books for the advanced copy. I’m so grateful.

So beautifully written. The setting is a small village in Ireland in 1985. We meet Bill Furlong, business owner and father to five daughters. Bill’s history is that he was born to a 16 year old unwed mother during a time in Ireland when unwed pregnant women were shunned. Bill and his mother were fortunate enough to be taken in at the home where his mother worked instead of his mother going to a home for unwed mothers. The handyman, Ned, also lives in the home and Bill has many fond memories living with Mrs. Wilson, the homeowner, Ned, and his mother. Fast forward to Bill as an adult. It’s winter 1985 and Bill owns a coal and timber business. He makes deliveries to the convent where he witnesses several of the young girls working in the laundry in deplorable conditions. Bill is an emotional and compassionate man. He considers his own upbringing, and he reflects on the lives of his five daughters, and in doing so Bill has a decision to make about what he witnessed at the convent.

Every word of this novella is important, beautiful, and carefully considered. It is poignant, perfect, and powerful. One of the best stories I’ve ever read.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with the opportunity to read and review this book.

I received an advance copy of, Small Things like These, by Claire Keegan. This book is based on the true stories of the Magdalen Laundries. It was a horrible time in Ireland.

Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Grove Press
Pub. Date: November 30, 2021

This short sweet novel is set in Ireland in 1985. The novel centers on a tender, loving family man. He unexpectedly meets a girl who is hiding from the nuns in the local asylum better known as the infamous Magdalene Laundries. As most of us know, the Roman Catholic Church founded the Laundries. Fallen women were sent there for punishment and a lifetime of misery. They were turned into slaves.
Unlike V.S. Axlender’s “The Magdalen Girls” this is not a book on the brutality that the girls experienced by the nuns. In Axlender’s novel, the reader learns that most of the fallen women were in actuality girls who were known to have had babies, or simply sex before marriage. How heartbreaking to read about their families disowning and deserting them.

In Keegan’s novel, we do not read of any abuse. We only meet the one girl mentioned, when our protagonist was there to drop off his bags of laundry. She begged him to take her to the ocean so she could drown herself. He had heard the rumors of the asylum but like most he was afraid to go against the Catholic Church. This stayed in his mind for days as we read about his daily life.
I say that this is a sweet tale because it is a story of hope and quiet heroism. We meet a simple man who tries to make a difference. The novel reads like Mother Teresa’s famous quote, “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.” These laundries were in existence from 1886 until 1996.

SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE is a portrait of a man reckoning with his history as the son of a single mother and a father of daughters when he comes face to face with the girls imprisoned in a Magdalene laundry in his hometown. This is a contained but quietly devastating novella, and also manages to be something of a page-turner - I would love to know what happens next.