‘Small Things Like These’ book review: Short & stunning

Colm Toibin, one of my favorite writers, called ‘Small Things Like These’ by Claire Keegan the best novel he read in the year it was published. The book was shortlisted for the booker prize in 2022. Oprah Winfrey chose it for her book club in 2024. The book is short, at just a little over a hundred pages, but packs a punch. Even Oprah, in one of the videos on the book club’s Instagram page, says you’ll be thinking about it long after you’ve turned the final page.

The book is dedicated to the women and children forced to work at the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland. Built to house women who had ‘fallen from grace’ but promoted cheap labor, Magdalene Laundries were stricter than prisons. Women had to work without pay and were only provided a meager meal at best. Their living conditions were horrifying, with many being forced to eat off the floor or sleep in dank places. In Ireland, the last Magdalene Laundry ceased operating only in 1996.

Set in Ireland in 1985, Small Things Like These follows Bill Furlong, a coal and timber delivery man, as he makes a shocking discovery that will change the course of his life. He’s living a content life with his wife and daughters when he stumbles upon something that involves the church. Bill doesn’t know how to deal with it and despite his wife’s insistence that he look the other way, he can’t help but get involved in it. The book is alternately slow and fast. What I mean by that is there’s a leisurely pace to life in the book but things unravel quickly once Bill discovers the town’s well-kept secret. 

Bill’s life hasn’t been easy. He doesn’t know who his father is and his mother dies when he’s just a child. But all his life he has been shown kindness by strangers who took him in and nurtured him. In a way, he’s come to associate love with kindness. Isn’t what you know of love and how you perceive love shaped by how you were loved while growing up? Bill has received kindness and it’s the only way he knows how to be. This dictates his actions and he can’t turn away when he feels someone needs his help. This might mean giving beggars all the change in his pockets or rescuing someone in trouble.

Despite the brevity, you feel like you really get to know the characters. I can’t fathom how Keegan has been able to achieve that but you come to care about the people in the story. Perhaps that is because Keegan taps into their vulnerabilities and shows you it’s possible to maintain grace under pressure. Bill is a man with a clear conscience and he does his best to live by certain principles. He’s a good husband and a caring father. When things go wrong, he doesn’t buckle. His goodness forces him to stand his ground and do what he thinks is right despite knowing it might be a hard battle. 

I read Small Things Like These in under two hours. It was so engrossing that I wasn’t able to put it down. It’s sad, horrifying, and strangely uplifting at the same time. It shows you what humans are capable of and that cruelty and kindness co-exist in the world and that it’s never one or the other but a mix of both. This is a book you’ll want to buy a few copies of, one to keep and the others to give to family and friends.

About the author

Claire Keegan is an Irish author who is known for her short stories and novellas. Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, Granta, and The Paris Review among others. Two of her novellas have been made into movies. Small Things Like These has been adapted into a film starring Cilian Murphy and Emily Watson. She has received several awards including The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, The Martin Healy Prize, and The Olive Cook award.

Fiction

Small Things Like These

Claire Keegan

Published: 2021

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Pages: 110, Paperback