Small Things Like These

"This concise novel, exploring moral courage and hidden truths in a small town, fits Oprah Winfrey's interest in stories of resilience and social justice. Its themes of compassion and difficult choices align with many of her past Book Club selections."

"Shortlist"

"Absolutely. At the centre of this book is the horror of the mistreatment of unmarried mothers and their babies by the Catholic Church in Ireland. It’s set in the 1980s—so recently, but before this scandal became known. The book, of course, is motivated and driven by the horror of what is being done to these women and their babies. But Keegan’s tone is as dispassionate as one could possibly imagine. There’s something absolutely merciless in that measured tone—it’s so much more powerful than an emotional denunciation of the cruelty of what is happening. We discover what is going on through the eyes of a local coal merchant, in a small town in Ireland. There are two elements. Firstly, the cost of moral courage: what is the role of the individual when he or she sees something unjust taking place, but when denouncing it will have enormous consequences, not just for them but for their family? The focus is not on the cruelty of the Church and the people in the Church, inflicting suffering on the young women and their children. It’s on the complicity of the whole community; we discover that almost everybody knows that something is going on. But almost everybody decides that it’s better not to do anything about it. It’s a wonderfully subtle moral dilemma. Where the Sri Lanka and United States novels were violent and funny and hilarious and extreme and exuberant, Keegan’s prose is restrained, and every bit as powerful emotionally. The author chooses a form and a length and a shape, and the question is: how much can the shape hold? I don’t think anybody reading Treacle Walker or Small Things Like These will doubt that the content of those books is as big as Glory or Seven Moons . All of them are addressing fundamental questions of life and death, absolutely at the deepest level. The question is: can you hold something as big as the criminal horror of the Magdalene Laundries in a format as small as Claire Keegan’s? Obviously the judges felt that you can, and that that book can take its place beside much longer books about the Sri Lankan Civil War or the recent history of Zimbabwe."

"Claire Keegan is just one of those authors who never misses.Small Things Like These considers one of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries (Catholic houses of “fallen women”), bringing them into focus through the glance of an ordinary man who accidentally uncovers one. With the precision and depth of a short story – her usual genre – Keegan captured and affected my whole attention. She draws a web of complicity around the convent’s activities that is chillingly mundane and brutally true. These kinds of places existed not just because of the cruelty of the people who ran them, but also because of the fear and selfishness of those who were willing to ignore them. Stunning. Just stunning."