Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These, published in 2021, is a masterfully understated novella set in a small Irish town during the weeks leading up to Christmas in 1985. At just over 100 pages, the story is compact but emotionally resonant, exploring themes of moral courage, religious hypocrisy, social complicity, and the quiet strength of human decency. Set against the backdrop of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries—a real and painful part of the country’s history—the novella is a powerful meditation on how ordinary people are confronted with choices that test their conscience, values, and humanity.
Plot Summary
The novella centers around Bill Furlong, a coal merchant in the fictional town of New Ross in County Wexford. As the Christmas season approaches, Bill finds himself reflecting on his modest but stable life—his five daughters, his loving though somewhat sharp-tongued wife Eileen, and his work delivering coal and timber to local households. The town is characterized by a deep-rooted Catholic conservatism, where the Church not only defines religious life but dominates social and economic structures.
During one of his routine deliveries to a local convent—specifically the Good Shepherd nuns, who run a laundry—Bill has a shocking encounter. Inside a locked coal shed, he finds a young girl, filthy and frightened, clearly being held against her will. She is one of many “fallen” girls, typically unmarried mothers or those suspected of sexual impropriety, forced to labor in the convent-run Magdalene Laundry. Though the nun accompanying him brushes off the situation, saying the girl had caused trouble and was being disciplined, Bill cannot forget what he saw.
The rest of the novella quietly builds tension as Bill wrestles with his conscience. Should he speak out or help the girl, knowing full well the consequences in a community where silence and deference to the Church are the norm? Or should he, like so many others, look away for the sake of convenience, security, and social acceptance?
The narrative culminates in Bill’s decision to act. Though the book ends ambiguously, with Bill taking the girl from the laundry and walking with her into the unknown, his moral stand is clear. It is a small act of defiance, but also an act of immense courage—choosing right over safe.
Characterization and Perspective
Claire Keegan’s use of limited third-person narration allows the reader to closely follow Bill’s internal journey. Bill Furlong is an everyman—kind, hardworking, somewhat reserved. What makes him remarkable is not extraordinary strength or rebelliousness, but his deep sense of empathy and awareness. He is a man shaped by personal history: the illegitimate child of a young maid, raised by a compassionate employer who gave his mother shelter instead of shame. This backstory creates a moral thread that drives Bill’s sensitivity toward the girl he finds in the convent.
Bill is contrasted by other townspeople who embody quiet complicity or active denial. His wife Eileen, for example, is pragmatic and concerned with social stability. While she is not cruel or harsh, she reflects the mindset of many who prefer not to disrupt the status quo, especially when challenging it might invite ostracism or worse.
The nuns are presented not as caricatures but as symbols of institutional cruelty cloaked in piety. Their actions are chilling precisely because they are carried out with calm detachment. The horror is bureaucratic, hidden behind prayer and social work, and therefore more insidious.
Themes
Moral Courage and Responsibility
At the heart of Small Things Like These is the question of individual responsibility. What is the cost of doing the right thing in a society that rewards silence and punishes dissent? Bill’s journey is not dramatic or violent; it is internal and ethical. His small act of kindness is enormous in moral weight. The novella suggests that acts of conscience—especially in the face of collective indifference—are not only possible but necessary.
Religious Hypocrisy
Keegan doesn’t launch a polemic against religion itself but offers a damning critique of the ways in which the Catholic Church abused its authority. The convent in the story is respected and even feared; its abuses are known, yet tolerated. This mirrors the real-life scandal of the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, where women were imprisoned and enslaved by the Church for decades, with state and public complicity. The novella exposes the hypocrisy of a religious institution that preaches charity while practicing cruelty.
Memory, Silence, and Complicity
The theme of silence runs throughout the book. Bill frequently notices what people don’t say, what they avoid mentioning. The town’s refusal to acknowledge the suffering of the girls in the laundry is emblematic of a broader societal silence that allowed such abuses to persist. Keegan uses subtle imagery and quiet moments—rather than dramatic confrontations—to show how silence can be as harmful as active wrongdoing.
Family, Belonging, and Compassion
Family plays a complex role in the novella. Bill’s love for his daughters and his memories of his mother are sources of moral grounding. His actions at the convent are not abstract moral statements but deeply personal ones, rooted in empathy. The novella shows that acts of compassion and solidarity often arise not from ideology but from intimate understanding and shared humanity.
Literary Style and Form
Keegan’s prose is spare, lyrical, and precise. Every word counts. There is no ornamentation, no unnecessary digression. This minimalism enhances the novella’s emotional impact, allowing readers to feel the quiet desperation and latent tension in every scene. Her writing echoes the restraint of writers like John McGahern and Alice Munro—quiet but devastating in its insight.
Symbolism is used subtly but effectively. The recurring references to coldness and darkness during the winter months echo the emotional landscape of the town—numbed, isolated, and spiritually frozen. By contrast, the title Small Things Like These suggests that it is in the minor acts—kindness, empathy, decency—that warmth and light persist.
The novella’s brevity is a strength. Keegan demonstrates that moral epics can be told in a few words. Rather than dilute the narrative with excess, she compresses it into a gem-like structure where every page demands attention.
Historical and Cultural Significance
The setting of Small Things Like These is not incidental. The 1980s in Ireland were a time of social conservatism, particularly in rural areas, dominated by the Church’s influence over education, healthcare, and morality. The Magdalene Laundries, where women were held against their will and forced into unpaid labor, were not fully exposed until the late 1990s and early 2000s. By situating her story in 1985—on the eve of social change—Keegan captures a transitional moment when old structures began to crack but had not yet collapsed.
The novella contributes to Ireland’s ongoing reckoning with its past. Like works by Sebastian Barry, Emma Donoghue, and Edna O’Brien, Keegan’s novella gives voice to those marginalized or erased by history. It encourages readers not only to confront past injustices but to ask difficult questions about the present.
Conclusion
Small Things Like These is a remarkable work of fiction that delivers a profound emotional and ethical punch with extraordinary economy. Claire Keegan’s mastery of language, her quiet but piercing psychological insight, and her moral clarity make this novella a standout achievement in contemporary literature.
It is a story about one man, one moment, one choice—but its implications are far-reaching. It challenges readers to consider their own roles in systems of silence and complicity and to recognize that often, the most heroic actions are the simplest ones: telling the truth, offering kindness, and choosing compassion in a world that too often chooses convenience.
