Claire Keegan

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan is a short but powerful story that would make a perfect read for a cold winter afternoon. The story is set at Christmas time and the writing gathers one into the life of Bill Furlong as he, his wife and their family of five daughters prepare for the holiday. He owns a coal and timber delivery service and as he goes about making his deliveries he ponders on his life which is good, although he grew up under a cloud as his mother wasn’t married and he has always wondered about the identity of his father.

The story expands as Bill makes an unscheduled delivery to the local convent which is one of the Magdalen Laundries, basically a workhouse for pregnant or delinquent teen girls. He can see that these girls are overworked and mistreated and he finds a young girl has been locked into the coal shed overnight. She is dirty, cold and terrified. He brings her inside and the nuns quickly take over and treat it as an accident that happened while the girls were playing. Bill suspects she was deliberately locked in to punish her. He goes about his business the rest of the day and receives repeated warnings to look the other way and not get involved but he cannot help but to dwell on the situation and compare how lucky his own mother was that she was not sent to one of the laundries. Unable to settle, he returns to the convent that night.

Small Things Like These exposes both the laundries for what they were and the power that is given to the Catholic Church in Ireland. These laundries actually existed and were not fully closed until the 1990s and even up to today there is no record of how many girls and babies were passed through this system or how many died, but the number is believed to be well into the thousands. Although we never get full closure on this story, it’s sadness and the delicate way it unfolds makes for a remarkable reading experience. This is definitely an author whose works I will continue to explore.… (more)

A small book packed with a lot of detail and excellently written. I definitely will look for other books by this stellar writer.

A young impoverish girl is sent to an Irish countryside to live with a childless couple who welcome her with open arms. The parents of the girl are preparing for their fourth child -- one added to the others that cannot to clothed or fed properly.

The girl shines when in the hands of this lovely couple. In particular, she develops a relationship with the husband. There seemed to be some mystery in this relationship that I still could not understand even after reading it another time.

She is given a bath, new clothes, a pair of lovely shoes, and housed with people who grow to love her. In the end her biological father comes to get her to take her home to help with the new baby.

While the girl had a small window of love and a better life, the reader cannot help but feel sorry for her when the time together with this couple who obviously emotionally care for her must end.

This incredibly written book packs a lot of descriptive feelings, and I highly recommend it! I found this book on many threads. I'm glad I finally read it after seeing it on so many threads.… (more)