Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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A lovely choice for Mother’s Day but get your hankies out

Foster by Claire Keegan

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This novel, which is barely 100 pages long, packs an emotional wallop. Set in rural coastal Ireland, Foster is the story of an unnamed girl, age unknown (I’m guessing 7 or 8-ish), who abruptly finds herself living with an aunt and uncle one summer. In these few pages, Claire Keegan beautifully reveals the pain and longing of this child and of her relatives, and the roots of each. The novel opens with this girl and her father getting in the car on a Sunday morning […]

That is when he puts his arms around me and gathers me into them as though I were his own.

Foster by Claire Keegan

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My heart does not so much feel that it is in my chest as in my hands, and that I am carrying it along swiftly, as though I have become the messenger for what is going on inside of me. ― Claire Keegan, Foster And so the days pass. I keep waiting for something to happen, for the ease I feel to end, but each day follows on much like the one before. ― Claire Keegan, Foster In Foster, a young girl is sent to […]

And then the nights came on and the frosts took hold again, and blades of cold slid under doors and cut the knees off those who still knelt to say the rosary.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

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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, […]

Just give me all the Claire Keegan

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

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I read this several months ago but it has stuck with me. A short and almost circumspect meditation on the difference that our choices make, and bravery in those choices.  The setting is Ireland in 1985, in the weeks leading up to Christmas (making it a very timely read for RIGHT NOW, if you are looking for something!) Bill Furlong is a hard working a coal merchant and devoted to his family. While delivering an order to a convent, Bill discovers something  – a secret […]

Starting 2025 Off with a Quick but Sad Read

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

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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 […]

This Week, In Irish Trauma Porn…

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

The Gathering by Anne Enright

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To be fair, only half of this is Catholic trauma porn. One may wonder why Ireland, of all places, has spawned such a fabled literary heritage. Personally I think it’s their sly sense of humour, finely tuned after years of British occupation. Perhaps it’s the potatoes. Both of these books abundantly feature potatoes.  Small Things Like These (Claire Keegan) *** Bill Furlong is a coal merchant in a small town in Ireland in 1986. It’s nearly Christmas; the busiest time of the year for him. […]



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