110 pages. It's 1985, Ireland, nearly Xmas. Bill Furlong, 40, a coal/wood supplier, has a clever wife and 5 daughters. He's never known who his father was. He was helped by the widow where his mother had been a maid, and Ned had been a lodger. Bill's kind. His wife thinks he's too generous.
Once when he delivered to the convent (also a laundry) he was surprised that the girls were locked in and keen to get out. Now when he delivers to the convent he finds a girl in the coal shed. She says she was a 14-week baby. He takes her to the nuns who are nice to her. On Xmas eve there's snow. He treats his workers to a cafe meal. The owner hints that he shouldn't upset the church - they're all in it together. He wants his kids to go to the good Catholic school. Someone points out that he and Ned look like each other. He sees crows eat and later get eaten.
On the way home he gets some shoes as a present for his wife. He wonders if Ned (now in hospital) is his father (Ned's never hinted that he is). He passes the convent and finds the girl in the coal shed again. He takes her away - not to the priest, because Bill realises he knows what goes on in the convent. He takes the barefoot girl through the town centre to his house, still carrying the shoe-box.
Feels like a too long short story.
A note at the end says that the last "Magdalen laundry" closed in 1996.
- "and the frosts took hold again, and blades of cold slid under doors and cut the knees off those who still knelt to say the rosary" (p.2) - doesn't sound right
- "a dog was licking something from a tin can, pushing it noisily across the frozen pavement with his nose" (p.51) - I like this
Other reviews
- Lamorna Ash (Why, then, does Small Things Like These not feel quite as devastating, as lasting, as Keegan’s previous work? Perhaps, for the first time in her writing, the lightness here has become too light – is kept too far away from the darkness that lurks at the other side of the town.)
- THÚY ĐINH
- elizabeth baines' reading group
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