Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
“Would you mind telling me where this road will take me?”
“This road?” The man put down the hook, leant on the handle, and stared in at him. “This road will take you wherever you want to go, son.”
In 120 pages, Claire Keegan revives the power of short novellas, quiet heroism, and the internal struggle to do the right thing when faced with institutional strain and pressure. A message that transcends time, and will continue to matter as long as humankind evolves. In Small Things Like These, coal merchant and family man, Bill Furlong sets out to live a simple life just like many of us. Devoted to protecting his wife and five daughters, he is confronted with a civil duty: to help those in need, even if it comes at a personal cost.
Set in a modest Irish town in 1985, the novella paints an honest picture of reliving Christmas after decades of longing and hardship. While conveying a time of economic recession and political unrest, Keegan chooses to focus on a subject that has only just begun to be told without apprehension: The Magdalene Laundries.
Keegan, whose Foster, So Late in the Day, and Antarctica cemented her as one of Ireland’s foremost short fiction writers, has long been preoccupied with the small moral turning points that change lives. Her mission to bring Irish people to the limelight has been amplified by platforms such as The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, Granta, and The Paris Review. Her lifework has been accomplished. Since 2000, she has continued to put forward these narratives, and has been awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and the Siegfried Lenz Prize.
Keegan alienates her characters from the societal upheaval, and merely conveys the consequences of economic and political hardship through Furlong, our lens into the story. On one of his coal deliveries, Furlong comes across a scene tied to the Magdalene Laundries—one of the many institutions systematically run by religious authority members.
The centers, dedicated to vulnerable women who lacked aid, community or had been exiled from their families and the state, confined “fallen women” or “wayward girls.” Designed to force their victims into unpaid labor as punishment for violating “moral codes”, they remained in place far longer than in other countries. In Ireland, the institutions were led by the Roman Catholic Church in conjunction with the Irish government, and lasted until 1996. The conditions became particularly harsh as they were included in the constitution, as a means to push forward gender roles, disguised by morality and national duty. Once they began to “recruit” women as an alternative to education or prison, it was clear how far down the systematic puzzle truly connected.
Keegan approaches this dark history with care, filtering it through the life of Bill Furlong, a hard-working and humble character. He is neither a revolutionary nor a political activist. Understanding his power rooted in his gender, he grows gradually more aware of the impact of his actions, and the ever-growing effects of inaction. The themes of internal conflict, of choosing between protecting his family and helping others when capable, dissolve, slowly merging into a dual reality. And we discover this with him. Gradually, and then all at once. A message as topical today as it will be for all of humanity throughout time.
Portrayed as a distinct community, yet eerily familiar town, this story becomes our own memory. The prose is precise, and rich with atmosphere, drawing the readers into a bitter and foggy Irish winter. Keegan’s language is deceptively simple, allowing the emotional complexity of her characters and the emotion conveyed to take on prominence and superiority. The best authors know when to let the story outshine the writing, and Keegan excels at making the reader feel like it was effortlessly put together.
Mrs Wilson is introduced as the woman who took Furlong in and raised him after his mother’s death. This early act of kindness shapes the way he grapples with his internal turmoil and navigates his external interactions. We learn of his difficult upbringing, yet are always reminded of how her care made the coldness bearable, at times even short-lived:
“As a schoolboy, Furlong had been jeered and called some ugly names; once, he’d come home with the back of his coat covered in spit, but his connection with the big house had given him some leeway, and protection.”
At the heart of the novella is the tension between compassion and self-preservation. Furlong’s wife, Eileen, is proud and protective, wary that her husband’s desire to help others may jeopardize their family. She is pragmatic, or perhaps even afraid:
“Where does thinking get us?” she said. “All thinking does is bring you down. If you want to get on in life, there’s things you have to ignore, so you can keep on.”
Her caution is never rooted in malice or ignorance, but in a mother’s instinct to shield her children:
“It’s only people with no children that can afford to be careless.”
Furlong never argues back, never attempts to explain his reasoning. There is an undertone of shame behind every kind act, as if kindness must be hidden. He begins to simply witness strangers and their misery, and avoids playing a role as he inherently would, made apparent by the flashbacks that haunt him:
“Once, a man from St Mullins got a lift into town to pay his bill, saying that they’d had to sell the Jeep as they couldn’t get a wink of sleep knowing what was owing, that the bank was coming down on them. And early one morning, Furlong had seen a young schoolboy drinking the milk out of the cat’s bowl behind the priest’s house.”
These flashbacks emphasize the narrative, reminding us of moments when suffering was met with silence, leaving the suffering to linger in the witness. However, even when faced with backlash, undiscussed consequences and an external environment set to keep him in place, Furlong never shakes off the feeling that he must do the right thing.
When the moment of moral reckoning arrives, Furlong must decide whether to protect his own or to extend his protection to others. Can both be true in the same act?
Keegan’s achievement lies in drawing the reader into the same internal dialogue. It successfully evokes the sense of power in our capabilities and the impact we all have on our environment and neighbours, even when there is a lack of personal connection to them. In an age of increasing social distance and self-interest, the bystander effect has grown stronger. Small Things Like These demands that we look around, refusing to look the other way.
As Mrs Wilson once told young Furlong after an act of kindness:
“You’re a credit to yourself.“
It is in fact small things like these, which measure our value to ourselves, and the world we live in.