Small Things Like These

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Keegan, Claire	4-week checkout	On Hold Shelf
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Keegan, Claire	4-week checkout	Due 04-25-2024
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Keegan, Claire	4-week checkout	On Hold Shelf
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Keegan, Claire	4-week checkout	Due 05-18-2024
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Keegan, Claire	4-week checkout	Due 05-10-2024
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Keegan, Claire	4-week checkout	Due 05-11-2024

"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. Already a bestseller in France and certain to be read worldwide for generations to come, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers"-- Provided by publisher.

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On Becoming a Man submitted by cdunlop on March 11, 2023, 5:11pm "[H]e found himself asking 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?" [pp 112-113]

Protagonist Bill Furlong was born out of wedlock to a young woman in the employ of a Mrs. Wilson, who welcomed both mother and child into her household, providing nurture and instruction. Furlong never knew his father, and he seems to be affected by an underlying existential angst, wondering often about the meaning of his life. A small businessman, Furlong delivers coal and firewood to impoverished neighbors in his Irish village, and also to a convent located up on the hill. The convent houses a number of young women whose role is unclear, but much gossiped about. Are they students, laundry workers, or single mothers? During one of his deliveries, Furlong discovers the answer to that question, but when he relays his disturbing finding to his wife, she unexpectedly responds with cold indifference:

'And in any case, what do such things have to do with us? Aren't all our girls well, and minded?'...'Where does thinking get us?' she asked. '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.' [pp. 47-48]

On Christmas Eve, Furlong walks up to the convent. He will make a decision there that will define him as a person, and most likely will engender marital discord that author Claire Keegan leaves to the reader's imagination.

Crisply written, "Small Things Like These" is a short, sentimental novel, illustrating that "small things" aren't really all that small. Warning: It does not celebrate Irish Catholicism; Keegan's "Note on the Text" is quite scathing.