★★★★★

Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These is a masterful novella that, in just 110 pages, delivers an emotional punch far greater than its modest length might suggest. Set in a small Irish town during the 1980s, the story centers on Bill Furlong, a coal merchant whose quiet, interior life is upended when a routine delivery to a local convent leads him to confront a dark and uncomfortable truth about his community.

At the heart of the novella is Bill Furlong, a profoundly human and fully realized character. Keegan draws him with astonishing depth, exploring his past as the child of an unmarried mother and his present as a hardworking family man. Bill’s interiority—the doubts, fears, and tenderness that guide his actions—makes him an unforgettable protagonist. His modest acts of kindness and moral courage stand in stark contrast to the oppressive silence of the town’s inhabitants, who have long turned a blind eye to the horrors of the Magdalene laundries thinly veiled in the story.

Keegan’s prose is a marvel. Her sentences are exquisitely crafted, evocative, and deeply moving. With spare but vivid language, she paints a world steeped in quiet suffering and unspoken complicity. Consider her description of the young women in the training school: “doing penance by washing stains out of dirty linen.” In one line, Keegan evokes both the physical toil and the societal judgment that defined these institutions. The novel is suffused with religious imagery, subtly and powerfully illustrating the hypocrisy of a Church that preaches compassion while perpetuating cruelty.

The women in the novella are portrayed with sharp insight. From Bill’s pragmatic wife, Eileen, to the wealthy Mrs. Wilson, who enjoys a rare autonomy, Keegan contrasts those trapped by poverty and societal expectations with those fortunate enough to escape them. Bill’s daughters offer a fragile but significant hope for a future where women might break free from these constraints.

The emotional heart of the novella lies in Bill’s encounter with Sarah, a young woman trapped in the convent. Found shivering in a shed on Christmas, Sarah becomes a powerful symbol of suffering and redemption, mirroring Christ’s journey to Calvary. As Bill decides to help her, the novella builds to a climactic moment of profound moral weight, where fear and hope are inextricably intertwined.

The ambiguous but deeply moving ending lingers long after the final page. Bill’s brave choice to act against the tide of societal silence leaves readers with a faint glimmer of hope: “His fear outweighed every other feeling but in his foolish heart, he not only hoped but believed they would manage.” It is a moment of quiet heroism, a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the necessity of standing up for what is right, even when the cost is high.

Small Things Like These is a remarkable achievement, a story that is as much about the power of doing good as it is about the cost of inaction. Its haunting beauty, fully realized characters, and evocative prose make it a modern classic. Keegan has written a work that demands to be read, reflected upon, and cherished. A five-star masterpiece.