I don’t think I’ve ever heard a bad thing about Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. It often makes people’s favorite books of the year or of all time lists, it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, it’s part of Oprah’s Book Club, it’s among the NY Times top 100 books of the century. So many people love it. And when I finished, I was just like, “This? Really? I mean, okay…”
It’s a very short book, just a little over 100 pages. I read it in one sitting before I went to bed. And thank goodness it wasn’t longer, because it was dull and surface-level throughout. There was absolutely nothing stellar about it. The writing wasn’t punchy or quietly powerful, the characters weren’t particularly well drawn, there weren’t any deep insights, the plot almost seemed like an afterthought. I think Keegan meant the plot to be a slow burn to illustrate how a small, mundane life filled with small, mundane activities can culminate into the intensity that makes life worth living. Only in the last few pages does our protagonist Bill Furlong gain energy and step out of convention to help out a person whose suffering is conveniently ignored by the rest of society. But I didn’t feel any tension, intensity, sentimentality, or admiration.
I’m not saying this novella is bad. It was just so subpar in comparison with the praise given to it from all other corners. I’ve read two novellas in succession, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and now Small Things Like These, and the quality is so vastly different between the two it might have been unfair to the latter. It’s possible to write a compelling, emotionally punchy story in a short number of pages, but Keegan failed in giving that to me.
I went in not knowing what this book was about, but to anyone who goes in thinking this is a book about the Magdalene Laundries (basically forced labor prisons for “fallen women”), it’s not. It’s a book about a man deciding whether he should stay socially acceptable or take a charitable step for his conscience despite social ostracization, and it used the Magdalene Laundries as a convenient plot device.
