Claire Keegan outlines an Irish community where one misstep can be fatal ★★★★☆

In 1993, the bodies of 155 women were found in the garden of the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity in Dublin. Eleven years later, the remains of about 800 babies and children were found in a septic tank in the western Irish town of Tuan. They were two incidents that for many Irish people only confirmed what they had secretly suspected for years, but had covered with a cloak of fear. Between the early 18th century and 1996, many Irish nunneries took on the task of sheltering young women—often pregnant unmarried or otherwise socially maladjusted—and employing them in so-called Magdalen laundries. The women were subjected to a strict discipline bordering on sadistic. What happened to their babies was often unclear. It is estimated that some 30,000 women have fallen prey to the Magdalen laundries over the years.

The concise debut novel Little things like this †Small Things Like These) by Claire Keegan, previously praised for her short stories, is set against this backdrop. It is December 1985 and the Celtic Tiger is still in a comatose sleep. In New Ross, South East Ireland, there are unemployed people everywhere: the shipyard is closed and the fertilizer factory has just been laid off. The women are queuing in front of the post office to collect their child benefits, many people sleep with their coats on because their houses are as cold as bunkers. The cows are “waiting desperately because they desperately need milking and the man who takes care of them has taken the ferry to England overnight.” Logical: anyone with any ambition goes to London, otherwise to Boston or New York.

Proud father

In the midst of this misery, Bill Furlong considers himself lucky to have a job. He is a coal and timber trader and although his truck could break down at any moment and many customers order their fuel from him on credit, he just manages to make ends meet. He and his wife are proud of their five daughters, the two eldest of whom attend ‘the only good girls’ school in town’: St Margaret’s, part of the nunnery of the same name, which also runs a boarding school and a highly regarded laundry. It is December and the family is preparing for the Christmas season. In her descriptions of the closeness and coziness of the Furlongs, Keegan candidly borrows from Charles Dickens, whose A Christmas Carol and David Copperfield inevitably be reviewed.

The strength of this novel lies in the awareness of the human vulnerability that permeates the entire book. One misstep, one wrong decision can be fatal. Conversely, one act of mercy can save a life, Furlong can testify. His own mother became unintentionally pregnant when she was 16, as the maid of a well-to-do Protestant woman. Her family immediately cut all ties, but her employer let her keep her job, saving the girl (and her child) a fate you’d rather not think about. Not in 1945 and not in 1985.

One misstep can be fatal

In a world where the line between a secure civilian life and the seamy side can be crossed with one misstep, be careful not to resist the authorities. And in the world Keegan describes in Little things like this those authorities are, of course, primarily represented by the church and its institutions. It is a reality that we know from countless Irish novels, but which Keegan brings back to life in a penetrating way.

Furlong’s confrontation with the authorities follows when he has to deliver a load of coal to the monastery and finds a girl in the coal shed who has apparently been locked up there all night. For the way in which the Mother Superior reacts to this discovery (‘Ah, poor child. Come in and quickly go upstairs and take a warm bath’) hypocrisy is a meaningless description.

In the scenes that follow we not only see how the Mother Superior tries to wrap Furlong with a Christmas tip and beautiful promises about the school education of his three younger daughters, but above all the culture of fear that grips the town is made tangible. The way in which Keegan works out the conflict between conscientiousness and self-preservation via Furlong is impressive.