At times, he wonders about the past, grows a little sentimental for the time at Mrs. What if they quit working constantly, and took time to think, or just to relax? In Furlong’s household, no one ever seems to relax, even during Christmas week. He’s fanciful at times, and wonders why they work so hard. Margaret’s, “the only good school for girls in town”.īut, Bill doesn’t have the same view of life as Eileen does. Bill’s girls are doing well, and the oldest ones go to St. He’s a successful coal and timber merchant, but he feels for the people in town who are going through a rough time and need a little time to pay their bills in the cold winters. And, she gave them a place to live and encouraged Bill in his schooling.īy Christimas 1985, Bill is happily married to Eileen, and has five daughters.

Wilson, a Protestant widow, continued to employ her, and even sent her to the hospital where Bill was born on April 1, 1946. When she became pregnant at sixteen, her Catholic family cut her off. Set in a small Irish town in 1985, the book centres on coal and timber merchant Bill Furlong, who encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Catholic Church as he does his rounds during the lead-up to Christmas.” If you’re not familiar with Ireland’s Magdalene laundries, you might want to look them up.īill Furlong might have been bullied in school in New Ross, but his mother was actually one of the lucky ones. “Irish author Keegan won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction for her novel Small Things Like These (Faber), described by the judges as an ‘unforgettable story of hope, quiet heroism and tenderness’. I picked up the book when I read an article in Books & Publishing. That’s probably one reason Claire Keegan’s novel Small Things Like These won the 2022 Orwell Prize for fiction earlier in the week. Sometimes, the shortest books are the most difficult to read emotionally.

Books by claire keegan