I think it’s a story about a man who was loved in his youth and can’t resist offering the same type of love to somebody else. I think this is the story of a man with five daughters, in a marriage, who’s running a coal yard and is probably a workaholic, and maybe facing some kind of midlife crisis. Talking over video call from her home in the west of Ireland, she says “I think that overshadows the community Bill Furlong lives in. “I disagree,” Keegan says, firmly, when I suggest that it is. But woe betide anyone who assumes it is “about” the Magdalene Laundries. Set in the run-up to Christmas, Small Things Like These follows a coal merchant who finds a young mother locked in a convent coal shed, leaking milk and mourning the loss of her baby.
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. I think something needs to be as long as it needs to be.
Unfortunately, this is often mistaken for what is condensed, and I have no time at all for what is condensed. “To me,” says Keegan, “Foster isn’t a novel. It’s also longer, though pagination isn’t what separates the two. Her latest, Small Things Like These, is altogether darker and more ominous. Foster is a gentle yarn about a small girl who is thrown upon the kindness of strangers while her mother gives birth to yet another baby. Fortunately for an author so sparing with her output, those who know and follow her include an international array of literary connoisseurs, and many of the children passing through the Irish school system.Įleven years have passed since her third published work – a standalone story, Foster – cemented her place as one of Ireland’s canonical writers, with a place on the leaving certificate syllabus. There have been just four of them over 22 years, and all are small, sharp and brilliant. F or those who know and follow her work, a new Claire Keegan book is as rare and precious as a diamond in a coalmine.
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