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pisceslj 's review for:
Small Things Like These
by Claire Keegan
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The story of a quiet man resolving to do better.
An Irish town where there is social pressure to be respectable, with the shadow of the Magdalene girls home/work house right next to the Catholic school. The story takes Dickensian themes & some of the Christmas Carol structure & modernizes it & reverses the roles.
Bill Furlong is a man who was raised by his unwed mother, doesn’t know who his father is, but they lived, worked & protected from society by an older rich Protestant woman. He grapples with these unknowns from his past, and how there has always been this Mark on him. This has led him to lead a respectable humble life with wife & daughters, steady coal work, going to church & a generous quiet spirit. Until he sees the young girls: their conditions, their fear & desperation, always in the shadow of the Nuns.
Before Christmas, Furlong has “visits” with these girls & the people in his life that do awaken that restless knowledge that his life could have been different, that he feels constrained by their expectations.
What do you do when the Church, your town, and you are complicit in suffering? When everyone passes judgment on those who have fallen, their families casting them off, what your own mother went through? When you fear for your own daughters’ reputation & future, especially with subtle threats from the Church for rocking the boat, and it could ruin them? That there is only a thin brick wall between the Catholic girls school & the abusive laundries.
The difference between A Christmas Carol & this story is Furlong is held back BY SOCIETY not his own greed. The people around him are the Marleys & Scrooge; they are content to keep the children of men “Ignorance & Want” close & turn from the vulnerable. Scrooge had to face his own demons to be welcomed back into society & make a family. Furlong has to face losing all of that if he makes the same decision to open his heart. His own wife anxious about money and their future, he is unsure if there could be room in her heart, if she would forgive him?
In real life we know how horrific this systematic free labor & abuse of women was throughout Ireland. How families & parishioners let it happen, wanted it to happen to bring penance on the “sinful” girls, the adoptions must be for the best, the Nuns are too good for taking them in & feeding & giving them work. That no one knew or believed the rumors of abuse ultimately for the Church to gain more money, shows the willful ignorance of civilians & deceit of the clergy. What if a town had faced it and refused to condone it?
I wish there was more to the story, but the choice to end it on the precipice mirrors that we never know what will happen to us in the same position. The moral point is to choose to help regardless, to stand with that action because you can’t turn away from someone’s suffering.
An Irish town where there is social pressure to be respectable, with the shadow of the Magdalene girls home/work house right next to the Catholic school. The story takes Dickensian themes & some of the Christmas Carol structure & modernizes it & reverses the roles.
Bill Furlong is a man who was raised by his unwed mother, doesn’t know who his father is, but they lived, worked & protected from society by an older rich Protestant woman. He grapples with these unknowns from his past, and how there has always been this Mark on him. This has led him to lead a respectable humble life with wife & daughters, steady coal work, going to church & a generous quiet spirit. Until he sees the young girls: their conditions, their fear & desperation, always in the shadow of the Nuns.
Before Christmas, Furlong has “visits” with these girls & the people in his life that do awaken that restless knowledge that his life could have been different, that he feels constrained by their expectations.
What do you do when the Church, your town, and you are complicit in suffering? When everyone passes judgment on those who have fallen, their families casting them off, what your own mother went through? When you fear for your own daughters’ reputation & future, especially with subtle threats from the Church for rocking the boat, and it could ruin them? That there is only a thin brick wall between the Catholic girls school & the abusive laundries.
The difference between A Christmas Carol & this story is Furlong is held back BY SOCIETY not his own greed. The people around him are the Marleys & Scrooge; they are content to keep the children of men “Ignorance & Want” close & turn from the vulnerable. Scrooge had to face his own demons to be welcomed back into society & make a family. Furlong has to face losing all of that if he makes the same decision to open his heart. His own wife anxious about money and their future, he is unsure if there could be room in her heart, if she would forgive him?
In real life we know how horrific this systematic free labor & abuse of women was throughout Ireland. How families & parishioners let it happen, wanted it to happen to bring penance on the “sinful” girls, the adoptions must be for the best, the Nuns are too good for taking them in & feeding & giving them work. That no one knew or believed the rumors of abuse ultimately for the Church to gain more money, shows the willful ignorance of civilians & deceit of the clergy. What if a town had faced it and refused to condone it?
I wish there was more to the story, but the choice to end it on the precipice mirrors that we never know what will happen to us in the same position. The moral point is to choose to help regardless, to stand with that action because you can’t turn away from someone’s suffering.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Emotional abuse, Sexism, Kidnapping, Pregnancy
Minor: Child abuse, Confinement, Suicidal thoughts