Summary and Reviews of Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Media Reviews

Associated Press Small Things Like These is a gem of a slim novel about a family man faced with a moral decision… a deeply moving tale.

Boston Globe Keegan's precisely considered details about character, setting, memory, and dramatic moment create a story you will want to read again and again. Her deceptively simple language is pitch-perfect.

Los Angeles Times For all her earlier accolades, Small Things Like These, Keegan's first novel, enters the world this month with the shocking force of a debut… Over what would amount to a couple of chapters in another novel, Keegan manages to place her characters and her readers at the center of an essential human dilemma: Will we turn a blind eye to evil in our midst, or will we take some action against it, even if it consists of just one small thing? As Keegan's concise, capacious new book demonstrates, little acts can lead to real change.

Minneapolis Star Tribune Claire Keegan… now gives us her best work yet. Small Things Like These is a short, wrenching, thoroughly brilliant novel mapping the path of one man's conscience, its torment and vacillation between two courses of action. Either one bears a price… Spare and potent, this is a remarkable story.

People A sparse, breathtaking perfect gem of a novel.

The New Yorker I haven't stopped thinking about [this] book, both because of Keegan's luminous prose and because of the crisis of conscience that unspools within its pages.

Vanity Fair The way a Keegan story unfolds is like it's happening to you, with a sense of tension and the suspicion of high stakes. Her prose is crisp and transportive, and full of a mastery of her homeland's language and context.

Wall Street Journal This exquisite miniature of a novel somehow defies the gravitational pull of its grim subject to hover in a quotidian, luminous present. Details materialize with preternatural clarity. The milky light of a winter afternoon, mist on a river, a woman opening an oven door, a child taking her father's hand: We see these things and feel their lingering presence as we are drawn into the life of an unassuming man in an unremarkable place

Washington Post At the opening of Small Things Like These, one immediately senses that Keegan is breathing something vital into the season's most cherished tales, until, as gently as snow falling, her little book accrues the unmistakable aura of a classic… From the elements of this simple existence in an inconsequential town, Keegan has carved out a profoundly moving and universal story… Small Things Like These reminds us that the real miracle in any season is courage. Get two copies: one to keep, one to give.

Daily Mail (UK) This distinctly unfestive Christmas tale confirms Keegan's reputation as an exquisite literary miniaturist who makes a little go a long way.

The Telegraph (UK) Keegan distills the years of suffering and torture that went on across the country into a reed-slim moral tale of quiet but monumental devastation… Although concretely realist, and grounded in dark social history, everything about this remarkable novella feels in some way miraculous; from the parable-like impression of the story itself, which culminates in an act of bravery and true Christian humanity, to the modest, measured beauty of Keegan's prose… The clarity and truth of Keegan's vision never falters. The result is a truly exquisite, tenderly hopeful Christmas tale in which compassion and altruism triumph over apathy and inertia.

The Times (UK) The novel isn't just an eloquent attack on [Magdalene] laundries, however. It is also a touching Christmas tale, genuinely reminiscent of the festive stories of O Henry and Charles Dickens; a novel that has been seeped in sherry and served by the fireside… As soon as you pick the novel up, it's all over. The monumental power of Claire Keegan is that she can create these cuckoo-clock narratives where every single word seems to be a necessary contribution to the overall mechanism of the novel. She is all killer, no filler… How lucky we are to have Keegan, a genuine once-in-a-generation writer whose dedication to her craft is as meticulous as it is masterly.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review) [G]ripping...Keegan, a prizewinning Irish short story writer, says a great deal in very few words to extraordinary effect in this short novel. Despite the brevity of the text, Furlong's emotional state is fully rendered and deeply affecting...A stunning feat of storytelling and moral clarity.

Library Journal (starred review) Keegan's beautiful prose is quiet and precise, jewel-like in its clarity. Highly recommended.

Publishers Weekly Irish story writer Keegan's gorgeously textured second novella (after Foster) centers on a family man who wants to do the right thing....Keegan beautifully conveys Bill's interior life...Readers will be touched.

 Colm Tóibín, author of The Magician In Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan creates scenes with astonishing clarity and lucidity. This is the story of what happened in Ireland, told with sympathy and emotional accuracy. From winter skies to the tiniest tick of speech to the baking of a Christmas cake, Claire Keegan makes her moments real—and then she makes them matter.

 Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain A book that makes you excited to discover everything its author has ever written…Absolutely beautiful.

 Hilary Mantel, author of The Mirror and the Light Small Things Like These is not just about Ireland, it's about the world, and it asks profound questions about complicity, about the hope and difficulty of change, and the complex nature of restitution…A single one of Keegan's grounded, powerful sentences can contain volumes of social history. Every word is the right word in the right place, and the effect is resonant and deeply moving.

 Oprah Winfrey A mighty story that will stay with you long after you turn the last page.

Reader Reviews

Jorene_J
A small book with a big message
I was drawn to this Booker prize nominee because it takes place in Ireland. It is a spare book(about 150 pages) that will haunt you for a long . When and how do people stand up to evil in the face of a complicit culture? Americans may not be so ...   Read More

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