Reviews tagging 'Child death'

Small Things Like These, by Claire Keegan

9 reviews

fboschetti's review

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Forced institutionalization

Moderate: Physical abuse and Emotional abuse

Minor: Suicidal thoughts and Child death

awaterswadesthrough's review against another edition

hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Classism, Forced institutionalization, Child abuse, and Confinement

Minor: Death of parent, Misogyny, and Child death

mtnest's review

challenging dark sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Vomit, Alcohol, and Confinement

Minor: Child abuse, Grief, Death of parent, Death, and Child death

zoeelizaking's review

emotional inspiring reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Within barely 100 pages Keegan creates a quietly reflective story with such a rich and immersive atmosphere and deeply layered protagonist in Bill. It’s a story of humanity and all of the ways in which it’s challenged — and how when faced with these challenges we can choose hypocrisy or kindness — against the backdrop of 1980s Ireland. Keegan peppers the text with minute moments of social and political commentary which cumulatively have a searing effect. I read a review which said she doesn’t waste a single word, and I couldn’t agree more — the economy of language, coupled with what she achieves in so few words is staggering. I devoured in a single sitting — a masterclass in my opinion.  

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Child death, and Emotional abuse

alisonannk's review

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Confinement, Abandonment, Alcohol, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Grief, and Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Slavery, Sexism, Kidnapping, Vomit, Torture, Excrement, Cancer, Physical abuse, Classism, Terminal illness, and Pregnancy

amselot's review

hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Forced institutionalization, Grief, Religious bigotry, and Confinement

Moderate: Emotional abuse

Minor: Alcohol, Child death, Death of parent, Excrement, Gaslighting, Pregnancy, Physical abuse, Suicidal thoughts, and Alcoholism

shelleyanderson4127's review

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

It seems that it is easier to depict cruelty than kindness on the page. Think of all the passages you've read about people hurting each other, unintentionally or deliberately. Contrast and compare with the the times you've read about kindness. The only writer I know who consistently depicts moral questions and characters being kind to one another is Alexander McCall Smith, and, with all respect to Mma Ramotswe and the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Smith is not a writer for the ages.

Claire Keegan is that kind of writer. The pages of her slender novel Small Things Like These are full of the ordinary kindnesses and courtesies people show one another, whether they are married couples, neighbors, shopkeepers or passersby. A horrible historical cruelty is also shown, obliquely, and is the trigger for this examination of one ordinary person's conscience, and the steps that lead him to an act of courage and kindness.

The person is Bill Furlong, a hard working coal and timber merchant. The setting is a small Irish town in 1985, just before Christmas. Furlong was the illegitimate son of a maid. He has always wondered who his father was. Fortunately, his mother's employer decides to keep her on when the pregnancy is exposed. Furlong now has five daughters of his own. Approaching middle age, he increasingly asks himself what life, his life in particular, means.

While delivering coal to a convent he discovers a starving girl locked in a coal shed. With wonderful honesty and an eye for ordinary life, Keegan intimately traces the development of Furlong's sense of responsibility to others, to his family, and to himself. 

The girl is one of the estimated 30,000 Irish women and girls imprisoned in Roman Catholic religious houses and forced to work in so-called Magdalen laundries. Often unmarried and pregnant, their babies were taken from them and adopted overseas. Many of the women and babies died of neglect. In the afterword, Keegan writes that a 2021 Commission Report found that 9,000 children died in just 18 of the institutions being investigated. 

This is a gem of a novel, beautifully written and keenly felt. The questions Furlong struggles with are the same for all of us, questions that will increasingly demand answer in our difficult and uncertain time. We can hope that, like Furlong, the answers can be found in love for one another.

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Abandonment, Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, and Classism

mary_juleyre's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective relaxing sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Misogyny, Child death, Pregnancy, and Physical abuse

Minor: Kidnapping

sjanke2's review

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Abandonment, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Gaslighting, Religious bigotry, and Torture