Small Things Like These
Claire Keegan · 2021
A short novel about a man in 1980s Ireland who glimpses the truth of the Magdalene Laundries and must decide whether to act. Keegan achieves such compression that every sentence carries the weight of the silence around it. The Cillian Murphy film extended its reach to audiences who otherwise wouldn't have found it.
The case against
Furlong is so quietly decent that his decision never feels in doubt, and Keegan stops the book at the exact moment consequences would begin. An hour and a half of reading, priced as a novel. Restraint is the achievement here; it is also a way of leaving the hardest scenes inside the convent unwritten.
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