Editors Reads Verdict
A novella of devastating precision. Keegan says more about complicity, decency, and the cost of looking away in 120 pages than most novelists achieve in 400. The Cillian Murphy film adaptation brought it to a global audience, but the book is the richer experience.
What We Loved
- Prose of extraordinary economy — not a word is wasted across 120 pages
- The moral question at the heart of the novel is presented without sentimentality or easy resolution
- The small-town Irish setting is rendered with complete authenticity
- Bill Furlong is one of the most quietly heroic protagonists in recent literary fiction
- The Magdalene Laundries context is handled with rigour and restraint
Minor Drawbacks
- At 120 pages it is a novella — readers wanting a full novel may want to pair it with Keegan's other work
- The ending is deliberately open; readers wanting resolution will find it incomplete
Key Takeaways
- → Small acts of conscience in communities governed by silence can carry enormous moral weight
- → Complicity is not always active — it can be simply the habit of not looking
- → The Magdalene Laundries represent a specific failure of Irish Catholicism and community
- → Ordinary decency, in the right circumstances, is an act of courage
| Author | Claire Keegan |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Grove Press |
| Pages | 120 |
| Published | October 28, 2021 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Irish Literature |
| Difficulty | Intermediate |
| Best For | Readers of literary fiction, Irish fiction, and anyone interested in the Magdalene Laundries period of Irish history. Ideal for book clubs given its length and moral complexity. |
Small Things Like These is set in New Ross, County Wexford, in the weeks before Christmas 1985. Bill Furlong, a coal merchant, is a self-made man — a man who knows what he came from and has worked to build something different for his wife and five daughters. He is, by the standards of his town, a good man. He delivers coal to the convent on the hill. He does not ask what happens behind its walls.
Then one December morning he finds something in the convent’s coal shed that he cannot unknow.
Claire Keegan’s novella takes its subject — the Magdalene Laundries, the network of Catholic-run institutions in Ireland where unmarried mothers, “fallen women,” and girls deemed troublesome were sent to work, often without pay or release — and approaches it entirely through the consciousness of a peripheral figure. Bill Furlong did not build the laundry. He did not run it. He is simply the man who delivers the coal. In making him her protagonist, Keegan places the novel’s moral question exactly where it belongs: with the people who knew and did nothing.
The book is, at its core, about the condition Keegan describes as “looking the other way” — the community-wide agreement not to acknowledge what the convent does in exchange for the social stability, moral authority, and commercial relationships the Church provides. Every character who tells Furlong to leave it alone, to mind his own business, to not ruin things for himself and his family, is participating in that agreement. The question is whether he can refuse to.
The Cillian Murphy film adaptation (released 2023, premiered at Cannes) brought the book to a global audience. The film is faithful to the novel in essentials and gives the material the weight it deserves. The book, however, is the richer experience: Keegan’s prose — lean, rhythmic, controlled — is doing things that cinema cannot easily translate. Read the book first.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "Small Things Like These" about?
In a small Irish town in the weeks before Christmas 1985, a coal merchant named Bill Furlong begins to see what the respected convent at the edge of town is hiding — and must decide whether to look away or act.
Who should read "Small Things Like These"?
Readers of literary fiction, Irish fiction, and anyone interested in the Magdalene Laundries period of Irish history. Ideal for book clubs given its length and moral complexity.
What are the key takeaways from "Small Things Like These"?
Small acts of conscience in communities governed by silence can carry enormous moral weight Complicity is not always active — it can be simply the habit of not looking The Magdalene Laundries represent a specific failure of Irish Catholicism and community Ordinary decency, in the right circumstances, is an act of courage
Is "Small Things Like These" worth reading?
A novella of devastating precision. Keegan says more about complicity, decency, and the cost of looking away in 120 pages than most novelists achieve in 400. The Cillian Murphy film adaptation brought it to a global audience, but the book is the richer experience.
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