Author: Claire Keegan
Published: November 30, 2021 by Grove Press
Format: Hardcover, 128 Pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
First Sentence: In October there were yellow trees.
Blurb: It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church. (GoodReads)
My Opinion: The heart of the novella lies in Bill Furlong, a coal and wood merchant living in a small Irish town in 1985, and his headlong run-in with the Magdalen laundries. Homes where marginalized girls and women were incarcerated, abused, separated from their children, and sometimes buried in unmarked graves, all for the crime of violating moral codes. Bill knew that his own mother escaped the situation, which drove him to take a drastic step to help in the way that his own mother was helped.
It is heartbreaking what these women were forced to endure. 'Small Things Like These' shows us that the acts of one can make a difference in the lives of others.
This novella will stick with the reader for a long time, and many will read it a second time so they do not miss the nuances that Claire Keegan weaves throughout her narrative.
Blurb: It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church. (GoodReads)
My Opinion: The heart of the novella lies in Bill Furlong, a coal and wood merchant living in a small Irish town in 1985, and his headlong run-in with the Magdalen laundries. Homes where marginalized girls and women were incarcerated, abused, separated from their children, and sometimes buried in unmarked graves, all for the crime of violating moral codes. Bill knew that his own mother escaped the situation, which drove him to take a drastic step to help in the way that his own mother was helped.
It is heartbreaking what these women were forced to endure. 'Small Things Like These' shows us that the acts of one can make a difference in the lives of others.
This novella will stick with the reader for a long time, and many will read it a second time so they do not miss the nuances that Claire Keegan weaves throughout her narrative.
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