Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
“To each was given days and chances which wouldn’t come back around. And wasn’t it sweet to be where you were and let it remind you of the past for once, despite the upset, instead of always looking on into the mechanics of the days and the trouble ahead, which might never come.”
“It seemed both proper and at the same time deeply unfair that so much of life was left to chance.”
“Why were the things that were closest so often the hardest to see?”
Small Things Like These is about a husband and father in Ireland. Bill has a wife and kids. He is a coal merchant and the story takes place around the Christmas holiday during the late 20th century. It seems to be a country town with a smaller population. Everyone seems to know each other and what is going on in their lives. We learn there is a place that unwanted women are taken to be hidden away. It is a religious institution. Bill has had some history with this as his mom was pregnant without a husband in the picture. Bill delivers coal to this place and discovers what is going on. What will he do? How will his and his family’s life change?
This is a short book by Claire Keegan. It had some good points that made you think. For example, when Bill is thinking “What was it all for?…The work and the constant worry…before waking in the dark to meet a version of the same thing, yet again. Might things never change or develop into something else, or new? Lately, he had begun to wonder what mattered apart from Eileen and the girls. He was touching forty but didn’t feel himself to be getting anywhere or making any kind of headway and could not but sometimes wonder what the days were for.” This is something that has cropped up in my brain a time or two before. It was nice to read on the page. There weren’t a lot of characters and even less that had speaking parts. You could only really get a sense of what Bill was about. His wife to a lesser degree. This story had a sort of It’s a Wonderful Life vibe to me, which I only realized after finishing it and now that I am looking back and thinking about it. The main character has a sort of moral quandary and thinks “was there any point in being alive without helping one another?” This book has a real Christmassy feel to it and not just because it takes place around the holiday. I liked how the book was prefaced by a mention of real places where unwed, pregnant women were taken. It is a shame that the attitudes were like that. The book was easy to read and follow. It was just a little boring to me though. It was really short and I don’t have a lot to talk about. I only took a few notes. There was only one word that I came across that I liked and pulled out. That was genuflecting. This is exactly the type of book that I would read if I want a book to finish it in one sitting, on Christmas Eve, while drinking a hot chocolate sitting in front of a fire.
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