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A review by broro117
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
4.0
A great Christmastime read that maintains an air of hopefulness while shedding light on a dark part of Irish history (which I'd somehow, shamefully, known nothing about prior to reading this).
I initially wasn't sure how I'd get on with Keegan's writing, but I ended up really enjoying it for reasons I can't describe any better or more succinctly than these couple of blurbs from the back cover:
"Keegan creates scenes with astonishing clarity and lucidity … [She] makes her moments real — and then she makes them matter." — Colm Tóibín
"Every word is the right word in the right place, and the effect is resonant and deeply moving." — Hilary Mantel
As Mantel also says, this book "asks profound questions about complicity, about the hope and difficulty of change, and the complex nature of restitution." Pretty incredible for a small book like this (wink wink) to contain all that and more while still managing a delightful, warm, and Christmassy tone. Looking forward to reading Keegan's other works in the future.
Quotes that spoke to me:
I initially wasn't sure how I'd get on with Keegan's writing, but I ended up really enjoying it for reasons I can't describe any better or more succinctly than these couple of blurbs from the back cover:
"Keegan creates scenes with astonishing clarity and lucidity … [She] makes her moments real — and then she makes them matter." — Colm Tóibín
"Every word is the right word in the right place, and the effect is resonant and deeply moving." — Hilary Mantel
As Mantel also says, this book "asks profound questions about complicity, about the hope and difficulty of change, and the complex nature of restitution." Pretty incredible for a small book like this (wink wink) to contain all that and more while still managing a delightful, warm, and Christmassy tone. Looking forward to reading Keegan's other works in the future.
Quotes that spoke to me:
- Even while he'd been creaming the butter and sugar, his mind was not so much upon the here and now and on this Sunday nearing Christmas with his wife and daughters so much as on tomorrow and who owed what, and how and when he'd deliver what was ordered and what man he'd leave to which task, and how and where he'd collect what was owed — and before tomorrow was coming to an end, he knew his mind would already be working in much the same way, yet again, over the day that was to follow.
- It was easy to understand why women feared men with their physical strength and lust and social powers, but women, with their canny intuitions, were so much deeper: they could predict what was to come long before it came, dream it overnight, and read your mind.
- He caught a hold of himself and concluded that nothing ever did happen again; to each was given days and chances which wouldn't come back around. And wasn't it sweet to be where you were and let it remind you of the past for once, despite the upset, instead of always looking on into the mechanics of the days and the trouble ahead, which might never come.
- When he reached the yard gate and found the padlock seized with frost, he felt the strain of being alive and wished he had stayed in bed, but he made himself carry on.
- It seemed both proper and at the same time deeply unfair that so much of life was left to chance.
- Furlong looked down at the dark shining river whose surface reflected equal parts of the lighted town. So many things had a way of looking finer, when they were not so close.
- Always, Christmas brought out the best and the worst in people.
- Was there any point in being alive without helping one another? Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror?