This was a very interesting and well-written book. It is historical fiction based on the Magdalen laundries. The laundries were run by the Catholic Church. The last one was closed in 1996. The book is not in-depth and is more of a novella but brings to light these institutions that were in Ireland. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 because I would have liked a longer story.

Christmas is upon us in this short story set in 1980’s Ireland featuring Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant. He and his wife and 5 daughters appear to be more well-off than most in their village. Because of this, Bill finds himself thinking of others less fortunate than he, often... usually giving pocket change or scraps of food, accepting food or wares for payment of his coal, etc. This type of thing seems to weigh heavily on his mind as we are taken on a journey of his upbringing—(adopted, if you will, by a woman who originally took his single mother in). His wife Eileen, who was not raised under such circumstances, often questions Bill and his generosity. So the reader finds themselves immersed in his thoughts of the past and what haunts him to this day... as well as accompanying him on his delivery routes. It’s here where we stumble upon the hidden cruelties of the church, making him question all he thought was right in the world. He ultimately becomes a hero/savior, be damned of the consequences.

Although a novella, I was engrossed by the end, so much so that I wanted to hear more from the writer about what happened when Bill went home. I also felt empty not knowing (good or bad) about his paternal suspicion and what he did or did not do about it. Simply for the abrupt ending, it left me with a rating of 3.5, rounding up to 4 stars. .
Thanks to Netgalley for this ARC.

4.5 Stars

True to the title, Small Things Like These is a small book that shows how small things matter the most. We aren’t talking about the small pleasures of life here. The book deals with the history of Magdalene Laundries (or the asylums). The story is fictional, but it could very well be true. In fact, I wonder how many were lucky enough to have their life turned the way it happens in the book.
If you are wondering what I’m talking about, you will first need to read about Magdalene Asylums set up in different parts of Europe and Australia. Understanding the subtle nuances of the book is not possible without knowing the dark history of the topic.
When a friend asked me to read about Magdalene Laundries, I looked up on Google and remembered that I came across this topic before. There was an episode of Miss Prynne Fisher Mysteries (in the Australian setting) that showed how the lives of the girls in these asylums were no less than a nightmare.
Coming back to the book, Small Things Like These is set in 1895 Ireland during Christmas. It shows Bill Furlong’s life in the then present-day as a successful coal merchant. The story takes us back to his childhood, artfully contrasting the miseries of the unfortunate girls forced to stay at the Magdalene laundries with no chance at the future.
The story is atmospheric, emotional, and wonderful. Not because it shows the truth of how the Catholic Church ensures silence from the crowd. But because it underplays the power to perfection. Bill’s emotions and thoughts dominate the book. His life is proof of how things could have been better.
In three scenes (two short and one medium-sized), the author brings out the mirror and places it right in the brutal asylum with huge walls and padlocked doors. There is no escape except death. And death came in abundance, but not when the girls wanted it.
To see the correct image in the mirror, you need to know what the asylum stood for. There is a note at the end of the book, but I recommend reading the history before picking up this book.
Don’t ignore this book, though. The language is beautiful, and the author’s control over her narrative is evident. She could have made this into an extended drama. But she chose not to. For me, that’s the biggest plus of the book. Though I’m a fan of happy (and proper) endings, I know this book ended at the right place. It leaves us wondering how things would go next, though we know what is likely to happen.
Overall, I would say, go read the book.
Thank you, NetGalley and Grove Atlantic Press, for the ARC.

P.S: I can’t wait to see the cover they’d design for this book.
#SmallThingsLikeThese #NetGalley

This was another surprisingly rich and poignant short work from Claire Keegan. I loved it. I loved the concern our protagonist has with spending his days getting up before light, working all day, getting home after dark to do it all over again, and wondering all along what the purpose of it all was if he wasn't doing anything good. I loved the glimpse Keegan gives us into the horrors at the heart of this short novel. Definitely one to re-read. Hopefully it will be talked about a lot in prize season.

Claire Keegan pays a glorious tribute to the thousands of tormented mothers - employed by the infamous Magdalene Laundries, also known as the Magdalene Asylums in Ireland – whose lives were nothing short of an inferno. “Small Things Like These” is an achingly emotional fictitious story that highlights in equal measure the paradoxical traits of cruelty and altruism, which unfortunately are an inevitable prerogative of mankind. The Magdalene Asylums were institutions operated by the Roman Catholic orders. Claiming to have been established to provide support and succour to "fallen women", these institutions confined a whopping 30,000 Irish women whose babies were separated by being forcibly given away for adoption. Worse, a Mother and Baby Home Commission Report revealed that in just eighteen of such institutions, nine thousand babies had lost their lives due to various reasons. In 1993, a mass grave containing 155 corpses was uncovered in the convent grounds of one of the laundries.

Keegan’s protagonist, Bill Furlough is a hardworking devout Protestant inhabiting the quaint town of New Ross. Furlough supplies coal, turf, anthracite, slack and logs to the townspeople. A stickler for punctuality, Furlough does all the deliveries himself. Waking up at or even before the crack of dawn, Furlough painstakingly fills his truck with the logs cut up by his employees before personally depositing them at his customers’ locations. Born to a single mother, Furlough has memories of being bullied at school, called names, and once even having come home with the back of his jerkin inundated with spit. However a timely magnanimity of a widowed benefactor Mrs. Wilson and her caretaker Ned ensures not only a roof over the heads of Furlough and his mother, but also a life of self-esteem and respectability. Mrs. Wilson takes Furlough under her tutelage and complete care when his mother suddenly keels over on the cobblestones one day, in the process of wheeling a barrow of crab-apples, and dies.

Determination, resolve, and resilience see Furlough go to technical school, establish a footing for himself in life and also be the provider of a happy household comprising a wife and five fine daughters. But just before the Christmas of 1985, when Furlough drives up to the “training school” run by the Good Shepherd nuns in charge of a convent, to deliver a stack of logs, an incident shocks him to the bone and alters his life forever. Ms. Keegan sets the stage for the seismic upheaval in such an unsuspectingly innocuous manner that the reader is just blown to smithereens when Furlough comes face to face with a life altering dilemma. The training school a euphemism for a launderette is the hotbed of conjectures and surmises. “Some said that the training schoolgirls, as they were known, weren’t students of anything, but were girls of low character who spent their days being reformed, doing penance by washing stains out of the dirty linen, that they worked from dawn till night. The local nurse had told that she’s been called out to treat a fifteen year old who had varicose veins from standing so long at the wash-tubs.”

Oblivious to all of these rumours, Bill Furlough’s truck sputters and complainingly creaks its way up a hill where the training school is located. Not spotting anyone in the front of the building, Furlough hesitatingly makes his way to the back of the training house. Finding a padlocked coal house door, Furlough instinctively forces the door open. “As soon as he forced this bolt, he sensed something within but many a dog he’d found in a coal shed with no decent place to lie.” Only that in this case it was not a dog but a young woman instead. Lying on the floor in her own excrements and with the front of a gown tainted with her own breastmilk. A shocked Furlough gently guides her to her feet before handing her over to a surprisingly remorseless Mother Superior who just wants Furlough to be off her premise.

This incident shakes Furlough’s conscience and just when he is coming to grips with it, a devastating fact about his parentage rattles the very foundations of his belief. Now burdened with not just one, but two startling revelations, Furlough decides to take matters into his own hands. What he proposes might turn out to ruin not just his own life but the lives of Eileen his wife, and also his five daughters all of whom have promising futures ahead of them.

Will the Christmas of 1985 bring Bill Furlough ecstasy, or would it consign him to an existence of infernal ostracism and rebuke? Claire Keegan has delivered an absolute “one sitting” masterpiece. Even though the book can be devoured in a sitting, the aftereffects of it will continue to haunt the reader long after she has finished lopping off a thousand other books.

Incidentally, no apology was issued by the Irish Government over the Magdalen laundries until 2013, when Taoiseach Enda Kenny finally deemed it worth to do so.
(Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan is published by Grove Atlantic/Grove Press and will be released on the 1st of December 2021)

Bill realized even though his life with wife and five daughters was comfortable it was lacking . His life in the 1980’s in Ireland was better than most but happiness and purpose was missing. The plight of unwed pregnant women was brutal in Ireland until 1996. They were forced to work hard in homes run by the Catholic Church and give up their babies. These girls knew a river swallowing them was better than their existence in these homes. Bill on his coal delivery encountered one of these girls and after much soul searching he knows what he has to do, even though his decision will be frowned on by many. This story follows his journey and gives an insight into the Irish society in this time period.

What a beautiful novella this is. Furlong is a coal merchant in a small town on the Irish coast. His own upbringing was fortuitous: although born out of wedlock, his mother was taken in by a Mrs Wilson who treated her and him kindly. He ekes out a modest but adequate living, keeping his wife and five daughters well.

His work is demanding physically but not intellectually: he works long hours, starting before dawn and rarely getting home early. There is a kind of ennui that permeates his actions. Take this:

"The next morning when Furlong woke and lifted the curtain, the sky looked strange and close with a few, dim stars. On the street, a dog was licking something from a tin can, pushing noisily across the frozen pavement with his nose. Already the crows were out, sidling along and letting out short, hoarse caws and longer, fluent kaaahs as though the found the world more or less objectionable."

His marriage is comfortable, but layered with a feeling of inadequacy:

"When the talk dried up, Eileen reached out for the Sunday Independent and gave it a shake. Not for the first time, Furlong felt that he was poor company for her, that he seldom made a long night shorter."

The book is full of these keen observations of minute details, giving a deep texture to a simple story. Yet the book also thrums with a deeper tension - I devoured it cover to cover in three sessions - Furlong has for too long been a spectator to his own life and has survived by keeping his head down. He distributes small kindnesses such as forgiving a debt here or extending credit where it is needed, but has ducked the larger ones.

These manifest themselves at the local convent, which also acts as the town's laundry. The convent takes in girls such as Furlong's mother once was, who have become pregnant and are kicked out of their families, but rumours abound that these girls are not treated well. When, one morning, Furlong stumbles across a living manifestation of that, he is confronted with more than just the immediate problem, but faces the wider issue of what his life has become.

I won't say more of the plot, but do read this book when it comes out. It's one I'll be rereading, I suspect more than once.

This novella is an incredibly powerful exploration of the horrifying truth of the Magdalene Laundries of Ireland. Set in a small Irish town in the 1980s, we are given the perspective of Bill Furlong, and the story revolves around not only his moral dilemma regarding the Laundry, but also his feelings towards his family, his upbringing and the townspeople.

This story felt so real, and the simple prose made it no less captivating. It examines the themes of morality, family, and religion beautifully. The sense of how powerful the church is within this small community is painfully evident, even though it is barely ever noted explicitly, and I think this demonstrates the strength of Keegan’s writing: she communicates so much by saying so little. I thought that centring the story on Bill as opposed to the Laundry allowed an exploration of the perspective of bystanders, a key factor in how the Laundries were allowed to continue for such a horrifically long time.

A gut punch and a masterpiece. That Keegan packs so much into a novella is Joycean (and I mean that in the best way). The Magdalen Laundries have been the source of much art, but of what I’ve experienced, only this and ANU’s theatrical production “Laundry” have specifically taken on the perspective of the bystander community (I’d be happy to know of other works that exist from this perspective). I will gladly explore Keegan’s other works after this.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Small Things Like These
by Claire Keegan
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Joan's review Mar 23, 2021 · edit
it was amazing
Read 2 times. Last read March 23, 2021.

what a thrill it is to read something special and beautifully written. Small Things Like These is a short work by claire keegan. i'm not familiar with her writings, but i will be looking to read more, as her writing is simple and spare, but compelling. a terrific author, she conveys so much more than you'd imagine could be contained in her sentences. this is a tale of a man finding the courage to do the right thing, knowing that the repercussions will be landing hard on him. i highly recommend this to any thoughful reader. i'm grateful to net galley and grove press for the opportunity to read this ARC.

“Small Things Like These” is set in 1985 Ireland over the course of a few months and is the story of a small town’s co-existence with its powerful convent. Although the author makes it clear that this is a work of fiction, it’s based on what is known about the Magdalen laundries which were operated by Ireland’s Catholic Church until 1996 when the last one was finally closed down.

Keegan’s novela is quietly, sparely written, and it’s obvious why her writing has been praised by, among others, Hilary Mantel and Anne Enright.

“This story is dedicated to the women and children who suffered time in Ireland’s Magdalen laundries.”

Despite the dedication, the novela revolves around the principal male character, Bill. The female characters are shadowy, undifferentiated and very much in the background. We see Bill develop self-awareness and courage while the female characters remain cowed and silent, unwilling to risk taking on the powerful Church.

I wanted more depth and nuance to the female characters, and more interaction between the convent and the town. The novela feels unfinished, but given the beauty of Keegan’s prose it’s certainly worth reading.


Thank you to the publisher for the opportunity to review the ARC via Netgalley.