If you’re planning to head to the theater to see “Small Things Like These,” a critically acclaimed new film starring Oscar-winner Cillian Murphy, do yourself a favor and pick up the slim but stunning novella that inspired it.
Claire Keegan’s tender tale of hope and quiet heroism was short-listed for the Booker Prize two years ago. It takes place over Christmas in 1985. Bill Furlong, a coal merchant living in New Ross, Ireland, is happily married and the devoted father of five daughters, but he’s haunted by memories of his own childhood. His mother gave birth to him while still a teenager, and he never knew his father.
While making a delivery to a convent at the edge of town, Bill comes face-to-face with one of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries — secretive institutions once run by the Catholic church and created with the intention of reforming so-called “fallen women.” He is first confused and then horrified by what he sees, and he feels compelled to help. But those around him, including his wife, urge him to ignore the convent’s activities or risk being shunned by the church and townspeople. Raising an alarm could risk his daughter’s schooling, as well as his business and the family’s livelihood.
At just over 100 pages, Keegan’s novel is deceptively simple. But her carefully crafted story and characters have readers wrestling with essential moral questions: Should Bill mind his own business and look away, or risk his own family’s welfare to care for a stranger? The book explores both the nature of evil and the complicity that allows it.
