I've always felt a strong link to Ireland and its history. I couldn't tell you why. Some things you just recognize, maybe. I spent years as a teenager devouring information about the Troubles. To this day, many of my favorite writers are Irish. Yet I'd never read Claire Keegan before last night.
Anticipating the release of "Small Things Like These" (adapted from her eponymous 2021 novel), I grabbed the book on a whim, without knowing what it was about. I remembered reading that Cillian Murphy (who's apparently starring in the film) had cried while reading it. I remembered it wrong. Turned out it was another book of hers, but it was enough to get me sold.
Spoiler Alert: I would suggest clicking off if you plan on watching the film or reading it yourself. There won't be many spoilers in this, but it's a very short tale, so even small tidbits can count as massive reveals. You have been warned.
"Small Things Like These" is the story of Bill Furlong. Devout Catholic. Father of five. Good husband. Bastard. His life with his wife Eileen and their five daughters is simple but happy. He is truly a man as men should be - faithful, caring, hard-working, honest, dependable.
Alas, his world is rocked to a halt when one early morning going up the hill to the Magdalene convent that keeps watch over the town, he encounters a secret. Bothered by strange noises and an uneasy feeling in his gut, Bill opens the gate of the convent's coal shed and discovers a young girl locked in there. Hardly clothed at all. Distraught. It is the week leading up to Christmas, traditionally a time when one does not wish to rock the proverbial boat.
And yet, despite Bill's desire for peace, the boat has been rocked already. There are things in life we can not go back from. Things once acknowledged remain acknowledged forever, and it's foolhardy expecting to step back into your old life as if nothing had occurred.
As Bill himself soon discovers.
"When he managed to get her out, and saw what was before him - a girl just about fit to stand, with her hair roughly cut - the ordinary part of him whished he'd never come near the place."
Look at that. The simplicity of the writing. "The ordinary part of him", the one that is in us all, and sits heavily to counterbalance the potential for extra-ordinary.
"Small Things Like These" is a book about attempting to step back from terrible knowledge. It's about trying and failing to cower back inside the cave once you've glimpsed sunlight. It's about a son's duty and about standing up.
Or faltering.
[He thought] of the small things she had said and done and had refused to do and say and what she must have known, the things which, when added up, amounted to a life."
I'm sure most of you, having read the above, know what it's about. And I told you I wasn't going to give you spoilers, so I won't tell you what happens next, nor how the book ends. It's a painfully short novel. I started it last night, and just finished it this morning (with plenty of sleep in between, I might add).
If you're expecting the movie already, I wouldn't advise you to read it necessarily. It might be nice just seeing the brief story unfold (and I'm sure Murphy will do a stellar job as Furlong). But at some point, it's worth reading not for the story, but for the writing.
Keegan captures the rhythm and cadence of a small Irish town beautifully and without going out of her way, or making a fuss. She just writes. And it's a rare thing in modern literature that something so simple can achieve that emotional resonance that this book does. There are certain passages, some of which I'm sharing here, that left me speechless in their beauty. Their simple truth.
It's a story that resonates immediately, whether or not you're familiar with the shameful atrocity of the Magdalene Laundries. For the simple fact that we've all, at some point or another, been faced with the choice of stepping back from a terrible truth. It's not easy to act when you act alone, and counter to expectation, it's not easy to screw your eyes shut either. It's a heavy choice that Bill Furlong is forced to make, one that had me in tears. I highly recommend it. Obviously.
Also, this is my first time posting in this lovely community, though I've been lurking in the background a bit. If it contravenes any local rules, I hope the mighty admin will have patience and won't hesitate to tell me. Thank you. :)
