Where was his father now? Sometimes, he caught himself looking at older men, trying to find a physical resemblance, or listening out for some clue in the things people said.

Bill was fortunate that Mrs Wilson, the widow who owned the Big House, was kindly and maternal. At this time, unwed mothers were condemned and their children stigmatised. His mind keeps returning to his upbringing by a single mother, who was a domestic servant in a Big House when she fell pregnant at 16. He was touching forty but didn’t feel himself to be getting anywhere or making any kind of progress and could not but sometimes wonder what the days were for. Might things never change or develop into something else, or new? Lately, he had begun to wonder what mattered, apart from Eileen and the girls. Getting up in the dark and making the deliveries, one after another, the whole day long, then coming home in the dark and trying to wash the black off himself and sitting into a dinner at the table and falling asleep before waking in the dark to meet a version of the same thing, yet again. Christmas is approaching and there’s a lot to do to get all his deliveries completed on time. But he’s stuck in a rut and is beginning to wonder what his life is all about. The story is set in Ireland in 1985, a period of economic deprivation and political instability, when “the young people were emigrating, leaving for London and Boston, New York”.īill Furlong is a hard-working coal merchant who is married with five young daughters. It’s a beautiful portrait of a man carrying out a small act of defiance against the Catholic Church at a time when it controlled almost every facet of Irish life.

It’s written in Keegan’s typical economical prose, but addresses big themes and big emotions. Her latest book, Small Things Like These, is being marketed as a novel, but it’s only 73 pages in length and feels more like an extended short story. Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley.Ĭlaire Keegan is a well regarded Irish writer best known for her short stories, which include the collections Antarctica (1999) and Walk the Blue Fields (2007), and her novella Foster (2010), which you can read for free on the New Yorker website if you wish to get a feel for her writing. Fiction – Kindle edition Faber & Faber 73 pages 2021.

These small things book