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A review by matconnor
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
5.0
Between Small Things Like These and Foster, Claire Keegan is becoming one of my favorite authors. She writes these perfect little novels set in Ireland that both end a little sooner than you expect or want, but in hindsight you see that she had the wisdom to end her stories at the exact perfect spot. Most authors wouldn’t have the discipline to end her stories when she does. They would be too tempted to follow the conflict set up in the final moments.
You will probably tear up at the endings of these novellas, but Keegan never resorts to sentimentality. She has a special gift.
I had never heard of the Magdalene Laundries before picking this up. It’s a horrible piece of history. It was an institution (Protestant and later mostly Catholic) that took in and imprisoned what they called “Fallen Women.” Unmarried mothers, daughters of unmarried mothers, former sex workers, women with special needs, inmates from psychiatric institutions and jails, victims of rape and sexual assault, and even just young women who were seen as “too flirtatious” and needed rehabilitation. These vulnerable women were sent to these institutions to be “reformed” but were forced into unpaid labor and abused by nuns for violating moral codes. The last laundry closed in 1996. They are still finding mass unmarked graves of babies and children who died at the laundries.
Bill Furlong, our protagonist, could have been one of these babies, but Keegan tells us early on how he was spared this fate:
Furlong had come from nothing. Less than nothing, some might say. His mother, at the age of sixteen, had fallen pregnant while working as a domestic for Mrs Wilson, the Protestant widow who lived in the big house a few miles outside of town. When his mother’s trouble became known, and her people made it clear that they’d have no more to do with her, Mrs Wilson, instead of giving his mother her walking papers, told her she should stay on, and keep her work. On the morning Furlong was born, it was Mrs Wilson who had his mother taken into hospital, and had them brought home. It was the first of April, 1946, and some said the boy would turn out to be a fool.
Bill Furlong is now a family man with 5 daughters. He’s a coal merchant and owns his own business that was started from a generous donation by Mrs Wilson, his mother’s employer and savior. His life isn’t without sadness—he’s troubled by never knowing who his father was and asks people in town if they knew his father’s identity—but he recognizes his good fortune.
One early morning while delivering an order to his local convent he accidently meets a young woman at one of these laundries and becomes troubled at her condition. He’s warned off from making any noise about what he’s seen. He can either let this woman suffer in silence or he can offer her the kindness Mrs Wilson offered to his own mother when she was in need. In an ignorant society like Bill’s, that will talk and wonder why a married man would associate himself with one of these women, he must decide whether to be comfortable or to be courageous.
Claire Keegan is too subtle to say this directly, but I think she makes the argument for a moral position that I believe strongly in, which is that vulnerable people (Sick, Poor, Distressed) often have no energy other than to get through their day and that it’s the moral responsibility of the healthy and well-off to offer them whatever support they can. She makes the case how these little and large moments of kindness and empathy add up to a rich life.
Tip: If you have Spotify Premium you can listen to the 2-hour audiobook of this for free. The audiobook is great because it’s read by an Irish speaker. I was so moved by this book that I rushed out this morning to get a physical copy.
You will probably tear up at the endings of these novellas, but Keegan never resorts to sentimentality. She has a special gift.
I had never heard of the Magdalene Laundries before picking this up. It’s a horrible piece of history. It was an institution (Protestant and later mostly Catholic) that took in and imprisoned what they called “Fallen Women.” Unmarried mothers, daughters of unmarried mothers, former sex workers, women with special needs, inmates from psychiatric institutions and jails, victims of rape and sexual assault, and even just young women who were seen as “too flirtatious” and needed rehabilitation. These vulnerable women were sent to these institutions to be “reformed” but were forced into unpaid labor and abused by nuns for violating moral codes. The last laundry closed in 1996. They are still finding mass unmarked graves of babies and children who died at the laundries.
Bill Furlong, our protagonist, could have been one of these babies, but Keegan tells us early on how he was spared this fate:
Furlong had come from nothing. Less than nothing, some might say. His mother, at the age of sixteen, had fallen pregnant while working as a domestic for Mrs Wilson, the Protestant widow who lived in the big house a few miles outside of town. When his mother’s trouble became known, and her people made it clear that they’d have no more to do with her, Mrs Wilson, instead of giving his mother her walking papers, told her she should stay on, and keep her work. On the morning Furlong was born, it was Mrs Wilson who had his mother taken into hospital, and had them brought home. It was the first of April, 1946, and some said the boy would turn out to be a fool.
Bill Furlong is now a family man with 5 daughters. He’s a coal merchant and owns his own business that was started from a generous donation by Mrs Wilson, his mother’s employer and savior. His life isn’t without sadness—he’s troubled by never knowing who his father was and asks people in town if they knew his father’s identity—but he recognizes his good fortune.
One early morning while delivering an order to his local convent he accidently meets a young woman at one of these laundries and becomes troubled at her condition. He’s warned off from making any noise about what he’s seen. He can either let this woman suffer in silence or he can offer her the kindness Mrs Wilson offered to his own mother when she was in need. In an ignorant society like Bill’s, that will talk and wonder why a married man would associate himself with one of these women, he must decide whether to be comfortable or to be courageous.
Claire Keegan is too subtle to say this directly, but I think she makes the argument for a moral position that I believe strongly in, which is that vulnerable people (Sick, Poor, Distressed) often have no energy other than to get through their day and that it’s the moral responsibility of the healthy and well-off to offer them whatever support they can. She makes the case how these little and large moments of kindness and empathy add up to a rich life.
Tip: If you have Spotify Premium you can listen to the 2-hour audiobook of this for free. The audiobook is great because it’s read by an Irish speaker. I was so moved by this book that I rushed out this morning to get a physical copy.