I was sent a copy of Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan to read and review by NetGalley. This is a calm, quiet book with a feel of the 1950s even though it is set in the 1980s. It is a short tale of a working man, Bill Furlong, who is questioning himself and his life. This is a slight book with a big message, it is ultimately a story that is based on the reality that was the Magdalen Laundries, which were run by the Catholic Church. Would that there were more people like Bill, willing to consider others and confront the traditions of an outdated and cruel institution that is accepted as the norm. A powerful little novel.

This novella could become another great Christmas story. It is set in Ireland in the 1980s and it is about a grown man who works hard to support his family of five daughters. The story is littered with his thoughts and memories of his upbringing as an illegitimate child who was taken on my a wealthy woman. His hopes, gratitudes, small acts of kindness and potential alternative lives: if only.

It is no coincidence that he receives A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens for Christmas one year, a book that acts as barometer of the poverty in Ireland at the time and comparisons to workhouses. In the build up to Christmas the story shows the concerns of getting deliveries on time, shopping, dreams and lots of small things that make a difference to people's lives.

A beautifully written book that is many ways could have been expanded into a longer novel, but in keeping it in its original format the tale takes on a concise theme. Indeed, the size fulfills the concept of small things. Brilliant.

The beautiful writing in this powerful short novel throws a spotlight on a time of great injustice. Hope and humanity comes in the form of the central character as he reflects on and reviews his own personal history when faced with the chance to do what he can to help another human being.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review this novel.

A descriptive and searching story set in Ireland midst the struggles of individuals . It delves into the issues around the way the unmarried mothers were treated by the Catholic Church .

A heartbreaking story beautifully told. The hardest part was that the time the book was set is relatively recent. There could so easily be a follow on written but perhaps the author really just wants to tell this tale.

A Christmas novella from the author of the award winning Foster, Small Things Like These is set in rural Ireland in the mid-1980s and touches on the predicament of women confined in the 'Magdalen Laundries' - Roman Catholic institutions where an estimated 30,000 'failed women' were women were confined from the late 18th to late 20th centuries.

Written in almost poetic prose, this was a touching story of a period in Irish history I knew very little about. I loved the writing (and picked up Foster on the strength of this soon after finishing), but I feel like the story would have had more impact if told across a longer novel with the female characters having more of a voice.

EXCERPT: It would be the easiest thing in the world to lose everything, Furlong knew. Although he did not venture far, he got around - and many an unfortunate he'd seen around town and out on the country roads. 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 to be 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 had seen a young schoolboy eating from a chip bag that had been thrown down on the street the night before.

ABOUT 'SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE': 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.

MY THOUGHTS: It is no small thing that coal and fuel merchant William (Bill) Furlong does. 1985 was a time of great hardship. Bill, although not wealthy, is doing all right for himself and is able to provide for his family - wife Eileen and his five daughters, through careful money management.

Bill Furlong has come from nothing, less than nothing really. But he and his mother were shown great kindness and that is something Billy is dwelling on this Christmas. When Billy discovers someone being treated cruelly and inhumanely, and discovers that his beloved Catholic church is covering it up, he faces a dilemma. Does he help, as his mother was helped? Or does he take heed of the warning and walk away?

For such a short book (128 pages), Small Things Like These packs a solid punch. While a work of fiction, the truth is that many thousands of girls and women were incarcerated and forced to work, hidden in disgrace behind church walls, never to be spoken of nor seen again. The children were adopted out, sold, or simply disappeared. Records were nonexistent or destroyed.

Small Things Like These is a powerful book about family, love, and trying to do the right thing. It is not a read that I am likely to forget in a hurry.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

#SmallThingsLikeThese #NetGalley

I: #clairekeeganfiction @faberbooks

T: @CKeeganFiction @FaberBooks

#fivestarread #christmasfiction #historicalfiction #irishfiction #novella

THE AUTHOR: Claire Keegan was born in County Wicklow, the youngest of a large family. She travelled to New Orleans, Louisiana when she was seventeen, and studied English and Political Science at Loyola University. She returned to Ireland in 1992 and lived for a year in Cardiff, Wales, where she undertook an MA in creative writing and taught undergraduates at the University of Wales.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Faber and Faber via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

For an explanation of my rating system please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com

This review is also published on Twitter, Amazon, Instagram and my webpage

Small Things Like These is a poignant and quietly powerful tale of courage, compassion and standing up for what is right, in the face of powerful institutional pressure to turn away.
It's the lead-up to Christmas 1985 in the Irish town where Bill Furlong lives with his wife and five daughters. While many in the community are suffering from the effects of a struggling economy, the Furlong family are comparatively comfortable, thanks to their thriving wood and coal supply business. Tender-hearted Bill often extends charity to those who are struggling to make ends meet, especially with the cold winter closing in.
In the course of his work, Bill makes delivery to the local Catholic convent, associated with both a home for single mothers, a commercial laundry and the private school his daughters attend. On one such visit, he discovers a shivering teenage girl locked within the coal storage hutch. Bill frees the girl and escorts her to the Convent's Mother Superior, but is troubled by the undercurrents he feels and the girl's entreaties for him to find out what has happened to her baby. Bill feels echoes from his own personal history, as his own mother found herself "in trouble" when she fell pregnant with him, but was fortunate to be taken in by her employer, Miss Wilson, rather than exiled to the home for single mothers.
Despite several warnings he receives from townsfolk, and his own wife's suggestion that he would be wise to turn a blind eye to what goes on at the convent, Bill finds the courage to stand by his moral convictions, despite facing the ire of the all-powerful Catholic church.
Exploring the horrifying history of the Magdalen Laundries and other systemic abuses carried out by the Catholic church in Ireland, Claire Keegan weaves a rather beautiful narrative against an ugly and troubling backdrop. It's an unusual premise for a Christmas fable, but it works.
I'd highly recommend Small Things Like These as a short but meaningful read, which will be appreciated by readers who are fascinated by personal stories and thought-provoking scenarios. I'll be adding a copy to my own small collection of Christmas classics, to be brought out and savoured every year during Advent.
My thanks to the author, Claire Keegan, publisher Faber & Faber Ltd. and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this exquisitely poignant novella prior to publication.

Wow, this book is just perfect. It’s a 128 pages of the most beautiful and concise writing. It reminded me of Truman Capote, where no words are wasted and yet we clearly see the characters and their world.

The story is set in the days leading up to Christmas as coal man Furlong starts to realise that the laundry that produces the beautiful white linen has a secret that is dirtier than the coal he delivers. It’s a real Christmas story, not a fluffy romance but one about young women that find themselves unmarried and pregnant and how at times basic decent humanity can seem like a Christmas miracle.

I loved unassuming Furlong so much, and felt so angry at how the women who were sent to the Magdalen laundries were treated. It deals with personal and community accountability, as how secret were these laundries and their practices? How many people turned a blind eye because it was the easiest thing to do? I was shocked to learn that the last one only closed in 1996!!! It was horrifying to be told how many children had died within their walls.

I was lucky enough to be gifted an eARC of this by @faberbooks, it’s available this week and please go and get hold of a copy and enjoy one of the best books that you will read this year. It may be a short book, but it will live with me for a very long time.

Small Things Like These is just my kind of book, quietly powerful, beautifully told.

Bill Furlong is a coal merchant in a small Irish town in 1985. In the run up to Christmas, he goes about his work, observing the people in his community. There’s an economic crisis and he sees poverty. There are births, deaths, small joys and hidden sadnesses. Permeating it all is the power of the church.

With quiet compassion, Bill goes about his day, helping where he can, reflecting on the happy life he has with his wife and five children, despite a complicated childhood.

His wife, Eileen, is more pragmatic and hard-nosed than he is. In times of fear she looks to protect her own. And there are hints that all is not well for at least two of his five daughters.

Then Bill is confronted with a choice, a moral dilemma, one that throws into relief everything that has happened in his life. He takes action.

This is just the point where what appeared to be a rich, complex and substantial novel becomes interesting. Bill’s decision has implications for his family, for his community. I couldn’t wait to learn how their lives are all changed by the ripple from this one small event.

Instead the book ends! I was so frustrated. I had to doublecheck I hadn’t been sent a sample by mistake.

I’ve got nothing against novellas. Some stories aren’t meant to be long. But this doesn’t have the feel of a novella. A novella is about one thing, it follows a straight path, and then it’s resolved. Small Things Like These seems to set up so many strands and then just let them fray.

So I don’t know what to say. I loved it. I’m furious about it. I feel as I would if I’d started a really great book, one I couldn’t wait to get back to, and then found I’d left it on a train. Whether that makes you more or less likely to read it is up to you.

I received a copy of Small Things Like These from the publisher via Netgalley.

A beautiful tender and meaningful meditation on life, its origins and its meaning.

40-something Bill Furlong, pillar of the community despite carrying his unmarried mother’s stigma, father of five girls, fulfils his duties as coal merchant, husband and father while wondering about the meaning of everything.

He repays the acts of kindness that were shown to him and a small act of compassion on Christmas Eve could have consequences for himself and his family in a wonderful thought-provoking ending.

One of the best books I've read in a long time. Incredible to see so much in one tiny book - so much generosity, ignorance, cruelty, and gentleness, so much Irishness, so much of life. Bill Furlong's quietness and goodness and thoughtfulness will stay with me for a long time. He's not perfect, but all the more real for it. A quiet antidote to toxic masculinity. This glorious work of art illuminates a shameful piece of our recent past, and every Irish person should read it.

Claire Keegan is a well regarded Irish writer best known for her short stories, which include the collections "Antarctica" (1999) and "Walk the Blue Fields" (2007), and her novella "Foster" (2010),.

Her latest book, "Small Things Like These", is being marketed as a novel, but it’s only 128 pages in length and feels more like an extended short story. It’s written in Keegan’s typical economical prose, but addresses big themes and big emotions.

It’s a beautiful portrait of a man carrying out a small act of defiance against the Catholic Church at a time when it controlled almost every facet of Irish life.

The story is set in Ireland in 1985, a period of economic deprivation and political instability, when “the young people were emigrating, leaving for London and Boston, New York”.

Bill Furlong is a hard-working coal merchant who is married with five young daughters. But he’s stuck in a rut and is beginning to wonder what his life is all about. Christmas is approaching and there’s a lot to do to get all his deliveries completed on time.

His mind keeps returning to his upbringing by a single mother, who was a domestic servant in a Big House when she fell pregnant at 16. At this time, unwed mothers were condemned and their children stigmatised. Bill was fortunate that Mrs Wilson, the widow who owned the Big House, was kindly and maternal.

"When his mother’s trouble became known, and her people made it clear that they’d have no more to do with her, Mrs Wilson, instead of giving his mother her walking papers, told her she should stay on, and keep her work. On the morning Furlong was born, it was Mrs Wilson who had his mother taken into hospital, and had them brought home. It was the first of April, 1946, and some said the boy would turn out to be a fool."

But even now, all these decades later, he still feels tarnished by the knowledge that he was born out of wedlock and that he has no idea who his father is. The only real male role model in his life has been Ned, the farmhand at the Big House, with whom he still keeps in touch.

The pivotal moment in the story happens when Bill makes a delivery to the local convent — “a powerful-looking place on the hill at the far side of the river” — run by the Good Shepherd nuns. The nuns run a training school for girls on-site, along with a successful laundry business. Bill is aware of local rumours that the girls are of “low character” and that they work demanding hours in the laundry as a form of penance, but he has no proof, and what would he do about it anyway?

But when he discovers a thin, dishevelled and clearly frightened teenage girl locked in the coal shed, he begins to join the dots. Aware of his own five daughters at home and the knowledge of his own mother’s fate, he decides it’s time to do something to help. He is, in effect, paying forward Mrs Wilson’s kindness.

Small Things Like These is a short, powerful read, one that will linger in the mind for a long time. The author has dedicated it to the “women and children who suffered time in Ireland’s Magdalen laundries” and her afterword provides a brief history for those who aren’t aware of these scandalous Catholic institutions that housed unwed mothers and abused them.

This is a story about goodness versus evil. Christian acts of charity versus religious dogma. A story of Ireland’s Magdalen laundries and the courage of a humble working class man to do the right thing knowing that the Catholic Church had ears and eyes covering every inch of his village and life. Bill Furling, a child born out of wedlock, whose life and that of his mother was saved by the largesse of a local woman’s kindness and charity. Two decades later, Christmas approaches as his family make preparations to celebrate with the meagre funds available which must also includes the necessary visits to the local church and mass. A delivery to the local convent results in an unexpected discovery of the tragic circumstances of a young girl. A short book that covers a multitude of this gentle souls thoughts, actions and beliefs. As a recipient of kindnesses over the years he now struggles with either paying lip service to the status quo or find the courage to do the right thing. That it is the small things that can make the difference, and true bravery does not always take place on a battlefield but in the acts of kindness that make a difference could cast a shadow over not only his future but that of his children lucky to have a place in the local catholic school attached to the convent. A well written and thoughtful story that highlighted ordinary people struggle to survive against poverty and the power of the church. in their daily lives. A period in recent history when it was easier to avert ones eyes than tackle a shameful abuse of power against young women and their babies. A hugely uplifting story of one mans courage to make a difference and indirectly a modern day parable that does not take long to read but leaves a lasting and powerful impression. Many thanks to author, publisher and NetGalley for this ARC.

I was pretty blown away by this little book. In an understated manner, it creates a story that is so mesmerising and moving that you don't want to put it down.

The main character, Bill Furlong, runs a coal company and is busy distributing last minute supplies to customers in the run-up to Christmas. But he stumbles upon a scandal at the convent that makes him question the way he and others live their lives.

Bill was an "illegitimate" child and he and his mother only escaped severe hardship thanks to a woman, Mrs Wilson, who employed his mother and kept employing her after she had given birth. Bill is always aware of how close he and his mother came to destitution and abuse, and as such has a lot of empathy and feeling towards people who are worse off than himself.

There are several references to the poverty and hardship that some of his clients and other people are suffering, and Bill's attempts to help them out. But in this he comes into a bit of conflict with his wife, Eileen, who appears to be terrified that in trying to help others they could also become embroiled in suffering and scandal.

At the same time as referencing the scandal of the Magdalen laundries, the book also looks at the smaller, everyday difficulties and uncertainties in ordinary lives. Bill wonders how things could have been different had he and Eileen married different people, and has moments of feeling trapped while obviously adoring his family and daughters.

It's a wonderfully written and thought-provoking book with moments of intense sadness and pain, and it left me thinking about it for a long time once I'd finished it. Highly recommended. If I could give it six stars, I would.

A slight little thing this, in terms of pages, but it delivers an enormous emotional load. We see in one good man’s act of conscience an Ireland on the brink of owning its part in an atrocity against its own people, perpetrated by the Catholic Church but abetted by the State and by the apathy and fear of those who turned a blind eye. Some lovely domestic scenes in Bill’s home and the stalwart, thoughtful, good-hearted character of Bill himself will stay with me.

'Before long, he caught a hold of himself and concluded that nothing ever did happen again; to each was given days and chances which wouldn't come back around. And wasn't it sweet to be where you were and let it remind you of the past for once, despite the upset, instead of always looking on into the mechanics of the days and the trouble ahead, which might never come.'

Highly recommended.

Small Things Like These is a stunning novella with a big heart and bigger message.

The beautifully told story of Bill, the owner of a fuel store in rural Ireland. As he traverses the town delivering coal and logs in the days leading up to Christmas, he considers his history and current life. Born to an unwed mother who took refuge with a kind local landowner, Bill is now father to 5 daughters. Grateful for the kindness his mother was shown but still unaware of who is father was, Bill’s rounds take him to the local convent. Drawn by the darkness and rumours of what might go on behind closed doors, Bill unravels a truth that everyone knew and shows the is haunted to do a merciful act of kindness.

Thanks to Faber and Faber and Netgalley for an ARC.

This was a well written short novel based in an Irish town covering the subject of the Magdalene laundries which were essentially workhouses for unmarried mothers where young girls were often punished as well as having their child taken away. The story is set in 1985 which seems very recent until you realise that these Magdalene laundries were shockingly still in existence until the 1990s.

The main character is Bill Furlong who was himself born to a single mother but was lucky as he and his mother were taken in by a local lady who looked after them well. Bill is now married with five children but facing a hard winter as the local economy is dire and he is seeing many in desperate poverty unable to afford food or heating. His business is to supply coal and this brings him to the local convent and laundry where he sees the harsh treatment being dished out to unmarried mothers which sets him thinking about his past and wishing to put right the wrongs of the past and present.

Despite the seemingly sad subject this is a wonderful novella with heart-warming sections when Bill tussles with moral dilemmas and tries to do the right things in the face of adversity and very challenging circumstances.

With thanks to NetGalley and Faber and Faber Ltd for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The subject of this book being The Magdalene Laundries, you would think it would be depressing and horrifying, and yet through the actions of one man it becomes hopeful and redemptive. More of a novella than a full blown novel, this slice of historical fiction is fully realised and just plain stunning.

It takes immense skill to say soo much in so few words. In spare, beautifully crafted sentences Keegan has summed up a generation, a group of people still bound to the past but on the cusp of entering a new and liberated Ireland. The family vignettes are gorgeous, the central character that rare thing - a genuinely good person. This is an incredibly rewarding read.