After following CBR for nearly a decade, I finally decided to join, so here is my first review! I chose this book to fulfill the “By an Irish Author” prompt in the Goodreads Around the Year in 52 Books Reading Challenge and the “Author’s Last Name is Also a First Name” prompt in the 52 Book Club Challenge.
“As they carried along and met more people Furlong did and did not know, he 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?”
For such a short read, this really packed a punch. While I was vaguely aware of the “Magdalene Laundries” scandal, this book sparked an interest and I spent several hours after finishing it going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole.
The story centers on Bill Furlong, a coal merchant in Ireland in the mid 1980s, who himself was born to a teenage mother. Luckily for him, both he and his mother were taken in by a kind, wealthy woman and he now owns his own business. While delivering coal, he witnesses some of the girls at the local convent “training school” being subjected to menial labor and later finds one girl locked outside in the cold who asks about her baby but they are interrupted by the Mother Superior. He begins to suspect that not all is what it seems.
The book really showcases the blind eye that people gave all Church related things for far too long. Bill’s own wife implores him to ignore his suspicions so that his own daughters do not suffer. Others in the town do the same. Bill, however, cannot just ignore it. He thinks of how his mother might well have been one of those girls had Mrs. Wilson not taken her in. While we do not know what will ultimately become of the girl, Bill goes against the grain and actually does something. The book ends with Bill walking the girl to his house while others in the village look on.
This book was so well written it comes as no surprise that it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and was the recipient of the Orwell Prize. I highly recommend this quick read.
