Small Things Like These: a Dark Legacy

- a novel by Claire Keegan.

"Why were the things that were closest so often the hardest to see?". This book is just about that: the small things which amount to a life (to all our lives), the things about ourselves and others that we cannot, or will not, see. This novella also carries a very important message- the courage to do the ethical thing as one goes about living life.

Reminiscent of Dumbledore’s sage advice to Harry Potter that “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities”, Keegan, effortlessly and unsentimentally, or rather being unpreachy, crafts a story that will makes the reader question past actions- if they had ever been caught in such moral dilemmas and if they had chosen the easy way out.

We are in the consciousness of Bill Furlong, a fuel merchant in County Wexford in the grim recessionary mid-1980s. Furlong is a provider - of fuel and of kindness. A deeply sympathetic man, a caring father of five girls, an attentive husband, a hard-working and sensitive employer. Despite his apparent security in life (but if you have something you are vulnerable to losing it), Furlong is beset by restlessness and anxiety, an inescapable undercurrent which goes back to his own origins. One day, his unhurried and placid existence is rocked by a series of events and uncovering abuse at the local convent which also serves as a Magdalen laundry.

*Spoiler ahead (skip to the next paragraph):  A part of tragic history of Ireland, Magdalen laundries were institutions in which ‘fallen’ (read: desperate and abandoned) women were incarcerated and often died. The nuns of Catholic convents/institutions ran a profitable laundry business out of the labour of these hapless women; hence, the name. While Bill Furlong realizes the terrible circumstances of the poor women trapped in the local convent in New Ross, he is unable to fathom the depths of depravity that he has witnessed. The horrifying truth is confirmed when Furlong discovers a girl locked away in the convent’s coal house, distressed, barely able to walk, and asking to see her baby. The encounter affects Furlong deeply. He introspects and soul searches at the reality facing him and his instinct to help the girl, which would add some meaning to his existence. The respectability that Bill has worked so hard to maintain, namely "to keep his head down and stay on the right side of people," and to ensure his daughters' success at St. Margaret's — the only good Catholic school for girls in New Ross — puts him in an existential conundrum.

Spoiler Free

The other pleasures of this book are manifold. Keegan’s prose is somehow simultaneously unshowy and carefully poetic. She narrates facts around events mundanely, which makes it more chilling as also the abhorrent fact when the reader realizes that the very real atrociousness of people flourish not only due to cruelty, but also because of the fear and selfishness of those who are willing to look aside things because complicity is easier than resistance.

It takes a lot of time and skill to write so concisely, and with such lucidity. Claire Keegan has given us a marvel of a story, one that within its ‘mere’ 110 pages somehow, and apparently effortlessly, carries a huge narrative, intellectual and emotional punch. This compact and crystallized narrative is a stunning feat of storytelling and moral clarity.