A short novel that deals with institutional child abuse in Ireland during the 1980s. It's 1985, a small town in Ireland. Bill Furlong works in a timber and coal yard. He has a family of five girls. It's Christmas and the family are preparing, making fruit cake and writing letters to Santa. Despite all this festive cheer, there is one thing niggling at Bill's conscience. A local laundry, run by the Good Shepherd nuns, is clearly mistreating its charges, although the power of the church means this could never be said out loud. He meets a girl from the laundry – a young woman, really, she's given birth to a child – named Sarah. She's clearly abused, often locked in a shed and kept in a filthy condition. Bill thinks of his own daughters, and also his mother, who had him out of wedlock, and managed to escape a similar fate. Is there something he can do to help? Based loosely on Ireland's Magdalene laundries, homes for “fallen women” where many abuses took place, Claire Keegan has woven a sparse, elegiac story, centring on a good-hearted man who must confront a difficult moral choice. A novel of quiet grace and dignity. Small Things Like These, by Claire Keegan. Faber Fiction. $22.99 Review by Chris Saliba Comments are closed.
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