“Small Things Like These” by Claire Keegan
I recently reviewed the New York Times ‘declaration’ on the “Best 100 Books of the 21st Century.” Similar to their earlier special edition evaluating the leading works of cinema in the same timeframe, it is a rather arbitrary and subjective. When it comes to any art form, “ratings” are a dicey proposition. BUT, they can be fun and thought provoking. Ideally, it may alert you to major works that you missed on first release. You can also reflect on your level of “cool”. Are you keeping up with the significant societal developments? Can you take your rightful place as a mover and shaker? My results were mixed. I have read 44 of the NYT’s Top 100. Middle of the road! Happily, I did identify 17 books for my future reading program. I will play catch up in the next six months. My first foray into this new project was reading Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. I had seen the 2024 Cillian Murphy movie based on the book, but missed the book when it was released in 2022. I am overjoyed that I made amends for my original omission. I loved it.
The work received universal critical acclaim from all the usual suspects. It was the winner of the 2022 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Keegan was already celebrated for her exquisite short story collection, Antartica and With the Blue Fields and her novella Foster. She had already established herself as one of Ireland’s most essential literary voices- no small feat because that is a crowded and competitive space. Her prose possesses a deceptive simplicity- tender, elegant and precise but packing a big emotional punch. In Small Things Like These, she applies her formidable talents to one of Ireland’s darkest chapters: the Magdalenes Mothers and Baby homes. In these facilities operated by Catholic nuns, an estimated 30,000 young women were imprisoned for the “sin” of pregnancy outside marriage. In just over 100 pages, Claire Keegan accomplishes what many writers fail to achieve in five times the space. It is an intimate character study and a searing indictment of institutional evil cloaked in piety. OUCH!
At the heart of the novel stands Bill Furlong, a coal merchant in the small town of New Ross in 1985. Furlong was born “illegitimate” to a teenage mother employed by a Protestant woman who showed them uncommon kindness. He is haunted and has spent his entire life searching for his absent father. He has built a stable life as a loyal and loving husband to wife Eileen and five daughters. He has a good reputation in the community. He is a reliable provider and a decent man. Keegan renders Furlong’s interior life with remarkable delicacy. He is a man who notices the little things and has good emotional intelligence. He is also a man who has learned the essential Irish survival skill of looking away, of minding their own business and understanding that your community status depends on not asking uncomfortable questions.
The fragile equilibrium shatters when Furlong makes a delivery to the local convent and discovers a teenage girl locked in the coal shed in the freezing cold. Her name is Sarah and she is one of the fallen young women confined at the home which is run by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd. Furlong must decide how he will handle the situation. He faces a choice. Does he inquire, engage, act or look away? Should he take a risk to do the right thing? Keegan captures the stakes brilliantly and frames the narrative in a compelling exchange between Furlong and the Mother Superior at the convent. The underlying reality is that everyone in town knows about the home and its mission. Everyone, including Furlong’s wife and his business associates has made the calculation that speaking up will cost more than staying silent. The Mother Superior is brazen. She doesn’t deny the cruelty; she justifies it with the casual certainty of someone who has never doubted her right to judge and punish. She reminds Furlong, with an unsubtle threat, that his five daughters attend the school and that his business depends on church patronage. She then give him an early Christmas “bonus.” Furlong knows if he pursues the matter further his business will suffer and the futures of his daughters will be at risk. His wife, already anxious about money, tells him to count their blessings and move on.
Furlong’s ultimate decision, which I won’t spoil here is both modest and courageous. I was raised Catholic and Irish American and the corruption and brutality portrayed here is outrageous- shameful really! Good Catholics who attended Mass faithfully, honored the sacraments and who would literally give you the clothes off their back, collectively allowed barbarism to proceed in their midst. They are religious, but not very Christian. The Church is repugnant. They not only failed to protect the most vulnerable- they built institutions specifically designed to disappear them. Keegan is profoundly Irish in her understanding of the almost primal contradictions that make up the culture. The warmth, the humour, the charity (the friendliest people in Europe for God’s sake!) juxtaposed with the cruelty, the hardness and the violence. Kindness and callousness in the same societal soup. Alas, there were horrific real world consequences which Keegan details in a cynical afterword.
The Catholic Church in Ireland built an empire based on shame, silence and suffering. It imprisoned women for sexuality, sold their babies for profit, worked them to death and buried the evidence in mass graves. Keegan has set the story here in 1985- recent history. Ireland had been an independent nation for 60 years, but in many ways it was theocracy where the Catholic Church controlled schools, hospitals, and social services and the Archbishop dictated government policy on contraception, divorce and abortion. The Church had an absolute grip on the islands’s cultural life. The Magdalene homes were part of that system. Graves have now been discovered at former Mother and Baby homes. Babies and toddlers had died from neglect and disease and were buried in septic tanks and unmarked plots. The adoption schemes were real; babies sold to American couples, records destroyed and mothers lied to about the fate of their children. The abuse was systematic and sanctioned at the highest levels of church authority. Amazingly, the last home didn’t close until 1996- when Ireland was already in the European Union and the internet was beginning to change our lives. Keegan’s characters expose the true nature of the sadism. It is front and centre. We now know after painful investigations that many of the bishops and priests in charge of this system were fatally flawed actors. Priests who preached chastity from their altars were violating their vows in bedrooms and vestries- with women, men and children. The hypocrisy quotient is off the moral charts.
Thankfully, the situation is radically different different today. The clerical abuse scandals that exploded into public view beginning in the 90’s - the child rapes, the exporting of predatory priests to other parishes, the institutional coverups, the clergy with children - shattered the moral authority of the Church. Ireland’s response has been breathtaking- church attendance collapsed, divorce and contraception were legalised and in 2015, Ireland legalised gay marriage by popular vote and in 2018, the constitutional ban on abortion was reversed in a referendum. Eliminating theocratic control transformed Ireland. It now has the best educated workforce in Europe and have built one of the world’s most prosperous economies. Modern Ireland, pluralistic and progressive, is everything the Church feared and tried to prevent. The dominance of the Church was destructive. It smothered the potential of the citizenry. Thankfully, Ireland discarded the suffocating blankets of shame, submission, secrets and lies and is transparently coming to terms with its complicated history.
Keegan’s little novella apparently got me thinking about these issues- thanks Claire Keegan. Small Things Like These is a masterpiece. The book’s brevity is part of its power. Every word counts and every image resonates. The title refers to the small kindnesses Furlong remembers from his childhood. The woman who treated him and his mother with dignity changed their lives. Kindness and decency gave him an opportunity to achieve stability, normalcy and happiness. He escaped the fate experienced by so many other Irish children born to unmarried mothers. When Bill Furlong is confronted with Sarah locked in a freezer, it is now his turn to make a choice and change the future - for him and for her. Keegan has taken a shameful era and through the art of her prose reminded us that we must all navigate the moral present. I look forward to her future works.
