Hello everyone and welcome to the discussion of the second of our October-November Discovery read novellas: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. Despite being a short book it deals with some pretty heavy themes.

Summary

Bill Furlong is a coal and timber merchant in his late 30s, who is married and has five daughters. His mother became pregnant at the age of 16 and was cut off by her family, but Mrs Wilson, the Protestant widow who employed her, kept her on and Bill grew up in her house. Bill never found out who his father was; his mother died suddenly when he was 12, and there was no father’s name on his birth certificate.

Bill’s business is doing well, but signs of the recession of the 1980s are all around him – dole queues getting longer, people unable to pay their bills, others emigrating, a boy drinking milk left out for a cat.

The Furlong family gets ready for Christmas – they attend the town’s Christmas lights being turned on, then make a Christmas cake together and the girls write their letters to Santa. Bill reflects on his childhood Christmases.

The Good Shepherd nuns have a convent on a hill overlooking the town, and it is generally known that they run a “training school” for girls although people don’t know much detail about this. They also have a laundry business. However, there are rumours that the girls at the training school aren’t actually students but are the ones doing the laundry. Bill doesn’t think much about these rumours, but one evening he delivers a load of coal to the convent and while looking for a nun he discovers a group of young women and girls who are polishing a floor. One of them, whose hair looks like it has been cut roughly with shears, asks him to help her by taking her as far as the river. He declines to get involved, and a nun turns up, so he completes the delivery. He is distracted and unsettled while driving away, thinking about the state the girls were in as well as other details he had noticed like the padlocked doors and the broken glass along the walls.

That night he tells his wife, Eileen, about what he saw, but she tells him that it has nothing to do with them, and there are things in life they have to ignore. She makes a dig about his mother being unmarried, which is the first time she has ever used this against him in an argument. She sort of apologises, but adds that “It’s only people with no children that can afford to be careless.”

As Christmas approaches, snow is forecast and people make panic orders of fuel from Bill’s yard. Another big order comes in from the convent and Bill resolves to deliver it himself the next morning. He arrives there before dawn and there appears to be nobody about. When he opens the coal house door, he discovers a girl locked in there – she has clearly been there for more than one night. He puts his coat around her and helps her outside, and she doesn’t appear to know what time of day it is. He rings the convent’s doorbell, and a nun reacts with shock when she sees them, shutting the door. The girl asks Bill to ask them about her baby, who is 14 weeks old and has been taken away from her.

The Mother Superior appears at the door, and pretends that the girl had gone missing from her bed. She tells the girl to come inside and have a hot bath, and insists that Bill come in for some tea. The Mother Superior is calm, but the younger nun seems agitated and jumpy about his presence. The girl is brought back to sit with them, with wet hair and wearing clean clothes. The Mother Superior asks her why she was in the shed, and the girl says they were playing and she got locked in there, although she starts sobbing. The Mother Superior tells the younger nun and cook food for the girl and tries to get rid of Bill, but he stubbornly stays a little longer. She gives him an envelope with money, adding that she will expect an invoice as well for the coal. Before he leaves, he sees the girl sitting in the kitchen and the younger nun fries breakfast. He speaks kindly to the girl, who cries “the way those unused to any type of kindness do when it’s at first or after a long time again encountered.” She tells him her name is Sarah and that she is from Clonegal, but the younger nun signals for her to stop talking. Bill tells her his name and where he works, and that she should let him know if she ever needs anything.

At home, Bill gives Eileen the envelope which contains a Christmas card and 50 pounds. She notices he is out of sorts, but he doesn’t tell her about the girl he found in the coal shed. He gets ready for mass, and as they enter the chapel grounds Eileen makes another dig about Bill giving change away to hungry children. He is distracted during the service, and doesn’t go up to take communion with the others.

Later that day, the Furlong family put up their Christmas tree and other decorations, then Eileen and their daughters make mince pies. Bill longs to get away as he feels the room is closing in, and he decides to go to see Ned, the farmhand who worked for Mrs Wilson while Bill was growing up. When he arrives, the woman who opens the door tells him that Ned has been in hospital for a couple of weeks with pneumonia. She comments that Bill must be related to Ned as there is a strong resemblance. Bill is shaken by this and sits in his car for a long time, but when he leaves he thinks back to the girl at the convent, regretting that he never asked about her baby like she had asked him to, and had left with the money then gone to mass like a hypocrite.

On Christmas Eve, Bill and his workers do a half day at the coal yard, then go to a local place run by Mrs Kehoe for a Christmas meal. When Bill goes to pay, Mrs Kehoe speaks quietly to him about his “run-in” with the Mother Superior at the convent, and warns him to be careful what he tells people about what he may have seen there, as the nuns have a finger in every pie.

Outside, the snow has started, and Bill enjoys the fresh air as he walks along the quays. He goes for a haircut, then picks up the shoes he had ordered for Eileen for Christmas. He finds himself walking back to the river and across the bridge, where he thinks about the curse of the River Barrow. He passes several houses and sees the people inside, then goes up towards the convent and into the coal house. The same girl is locked in there again, and he gives her his coat and walks her out. He considers taking her to the priest’s house, but realises that the priest would already know what is happening at the convent. On the way back to his house, they pass many people, some of whom realise that Sarah is from the laundry. He wonders to himself what the point of being alive is if we don’t help each other, and how you could call yourself a Christian if you don’t. He thinks about how his own mother could have ended up in that place if it hadn’t been for the kindness of Mrs Wilson. He knows he will pay for this action, and that there will be a world of trouble waiting for him, but it would be worse to live with himself if he hadn’t done it. In his heart, he believes that they will manage.

Cultural context

The book is set in 1985 in New Ross, which is in the southeast of the Republic of Ireland. There has been a settlement there since the 6th century, and it was an important international port from the 13th century to the 19th century, when ships got too big for the shallow water. American readers might be interested to know that former US president John F Kennedy’s great-grandfather was from near New Ross, where this book is set – JFK visited Ireland in June 1963, and here is a video of him giving a speech at the New Ross quayside.

The Republic of Ireland was going through a pretty bad recession at the time this book is set. According to a policy paper by the Center for West European Studies, “The period 1980 to 1987 was one of prolonged recession, falling living standards, a dramatic increase in unemployment and, once again, the prospect of emigration as the best option for the young. Total employment declined by almost 6 percent and employment in manufacturing by 25 percent.”

As for the influence of the Catholic church – when the island of Ireland was partitioned, the Catholic church gained a lot of political influence in the 26 counties of what is now called the Republic of Ireland, and at the time of partition 92.6% of the population was Catholic (this does not include Northern Ireland, which is a different kettle of fish). The church also controlled most of the country’s hospitals, schools, and a lot of other social services.

In 1985, the year this book is set, legislation that made condoms and spermicides available at pharmacies without prescription to people over 18 was approved (quite controversially, as the Catholic church was very against it), although advertising contraceptives was still illegal and the birth control pill was still restricted. Supplying artificial contraception with a prescription to married couples had only been allowed since 1979.

Other things that were illegal in the Republic of Ireland in 1985 include: homosexuality [decriminalised in 1993], divorce and remarriage [overturned by referendum in 1995], same-sex marriage [legalised by popular vote in 2015], abortion [overturned by referendum in 2018], selling alcohol on Good Friday [legalised in 2018].

What I’m really trying to get across here is how much power and influence the Catholic church had over Irish society, including politicians, at the time.

Magdalene laundries

The Wikipedia page on Magdalene Laundries in Ireland says they “were institutions usually run by Roman Catholic orders, which operated from the 18th to the late 20th centuries. They were run ostensibly to house "fallen women", an estimated 30,000 of whom were confined in these institutions in Ireland. In 1993, unmarked graves of 155 women were uncovered in the convent grounds of one of the laundries. This led to media revelations about the operations of the secretive institutions.”

The Irish singer Sinead O’Connor, who died a few months ago, was sent to one of these institutions when she was 14 and spent about 18 months there.

A 1998 documentary, Sex in a Cold Climate, features interviews with four women who were in Magdalene laundries. It is worth watching if you have a spare 50 minutes, but of course trigger warning for the interviewees discussing the sexual, psychological and physical abuse they were subjected to. This documentary was used as inspiration for the 2002 film The Magdalene Sisters.

The last Magdalene laundry in the Republic of Ireland closed in 1996, and it is apparently the only one that has not been demolished. In 2022 the government announced it would be turned into a National Centre for Research and Remembrance.

In 2013, the Taoiseach Enda Kenny (the head of government, roughly equivalent to a prime minister) gave an official public apology to the women who were incarcerated in Magdalene laundries (short video clip, and the full transcript). The Irish state has since paid compensation to some of the survivors, but the religious organisations involved have not. An Irish Times article from March 2022 reported:

All four religious congregations involved in running Ireland's 10 Magdalene laundries… have refused to contribute to a State fund to compensate the women who worked in them.

A total of €32.8 million has so far been paid by the State in awards under a redress scheme created in December 2013 which has given awards since of up to €100,000 to 814 survivors.

However, the Religious Sisters of Charity, the Sisters of Mercy, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity and the Good Shepherd Sisters have "declined" to make a financial contribution to the Magdalen Laundries Restorative Justice Ex Gratia Scheme, the Department of Children confirmed to The Irish Times.

Incidentally, Magdalene laundries are not unique to the Republic of Ireland – they also had them in Northern Ireland, the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Sweden.

Bookclub Bingo 2023 categories: Discovery Read, Historical Fiction (green)

Trigger warnings: Storygraph users have marked the book with the following trigger warnings: Forced institutionalization, Child abuse, Confinement, Religious bigotry, Physical abuse, Emotional abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Death of parent, Vomit

Other links:

• Claire Keegan on Wikipedia
• Small Things Like These on Wikipedia
• An interview with Claire Keegan about the book
• Video – Claire Keegan answers readers' questions about 'Small Things Like These'
• The r/bookclub discussion of Foster, another of Claire Keegan’s works

The discussion questions are in the comments below.

Join us on Monday 13th November when u/DernhelmLaughed leads the discussion on the final novella, Galatea by Madeline Miller.