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?
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These“What it is to be a man,” she said, “and to have days off.”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These
I’d read some reviews and I had high expectations for this book, but nothing prepared me for how much this story would affect me.
I’m so impressed by Keegan’s talent to tell such a crushing and quiet tale with so few words. At only 128 pages, I was floored by the richness of the setting and the families who inhabit it.
Bill Furlong was born to an unwed teenage mother and was raised on the estate of her employer, Ms. Wilson, a wealthy protestant widow. William never learned who his father was as his mother died when he was twelve. The house’s caretaker, Ned, and Mrs. Wilson looked after Bill and supported him after his mother’s death.
Bill runs a successful business delivering coal and wood to his town and the surrounding area. His employees haul and pack the coal from the riverboats, and Bill manages the books and delivers the shipments in his truck. He leaves home before dawn and returns home in the dark. He is keenly aware of how fortunate he is given his circumstances. It is the 1980s in rural Ireland. Bill’s neighbors struggle to feed their families, and Bill remains diligent, keeping up with his wife and five daughters to keep them settled, happy, and financially stable.
On his routine delivery to the local convent, which runs a Magdalene Laundry, he comes upon a group of teenage girls scrubbing the floor. Upon seeing him, one girl runs up to him and begs him to take her away, only as far as the river. Bill says he cannot help her. The girl panics and returns to her scrubbing as soon as a nun enters the room. The nun admonishes the girl for talking to Bill and hustles Bill back to the parking lot where she pays him and sends him on his way.
Bill and the rest of the town know that something is very wrong at the convent, but they do not question it as the church runs the local school and nobody wants to be on the bad side of the Catholic church. Bill tries to talk to his wife about it, but she assures him that their daughters are “good girls” and Bill shouldn’t worry about things that don’t involve him.
This is a story about women as told via a man’s perspective, and it could go wrong in so many ways. But what makes it so effective is that it is entirely from Bill’s point of view. He struggles with his conscience because he is no stranger to women and the societal rules to which they are forced to adhere. He knows he is complicit, and this acknowledgment makes him a deeply sympathetic character. He sees what is happening to the girls trapped in the convent, and he knows that his mother could have easily been one of those girls if Mrs. Wilson had not kept her on after her pregnancy was discovered. We are able to see through his eyes how his town supports and protects its citizens conditionally. As the story goes on, his eyes are opened as to how easy it is to turn your back on your neighbor or your children in order to protect yourself first.
