Small Things Like These
by Keegan, Claire
- Used
- Fine
- Hardcover
- Signed
- first
- Condition
- Fine/Fine
- ISBN 10
- 0802158749
- ISBN 13
- 9780802158741
- Seller
-
Naas, Kildare, Ireland
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York. USA: Grove Press, 2021. Book. Fine. Hardcover. Signed by Author(s). 1st Edition. First American Edition, First Printing. In original first state jacket, without the Booker blurb. Signed by the author Claire Keegan to the title page. .
Reviews
On Nov 21 2021, a reader said:
Small Things Like These is a novella by award-winning Irish author, Claire Keegan which can be easily read in one sitting. In December 1985, in the little Irish town of New Ross, coal and timber merchant, William Furlong delivers a load of fuel to convent next door to St Margaret's school, where two of his daughters are taught.
Sister Carmel being absent, he opens the chapel door to find a group of young women on hands and knees, polishing the floors, one of whom begs him to take her away. He has heard, and perhaps dismissed, the rumours about the convent's training school for girls, that girls in trouble are made to work in the laundries. He gets on with his job.
Then, on the icy Sunday before Christmas, he has another load of coal to deliver to the convent. He's a little early, and none of the Good Shepherd nuns are at the coal shed to meet him, but eager to get on, he unlocks the shed.
What he finds, or actually whom, is a shock, and despite the ready cover story that the Mother Superior provides, her smoothly convincing act, William is disturbed. Her veiled threat towards the future of his daughters and his business, should he make any sort of fuss about what he has encountered, while it is echoed by his wife and others in the town, disturbs him even more.
"…you want to get on in life, there's things you have to ignore, so you can keep on"
William cannot forget that he was born to an unwed mother in 1946, and his mother had only escaped the same fate as those girls he has seen through the Christian generosity of a Protestant widow. But for Mrs Wilson, where might William have ended up? Can he really tolerate the status quo?
"He found himself asking was there any point in being alive without helping one another? Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror?"
Keegan deftly portrays a hard-working man who is charitable and generous, both with what he has and his opinions of those around him. Her descriptive prose easily captures the setting and the mindset of society at that time, the power of the Catholic Church in small Irish towns.
This powerful little tale demonstrates just how the Magdalen laundries were able to persist in a first-world country until four years short of the twenty-first Century and illustrates the saying that evil persists where good men fail to act. An uplifting story.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Grove Atlantic.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Kelleher Rare Books (IE)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 016298
- Title
- Small Things Like These
- Author
- Keegan, Claire
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Fine
- Jacket Condition
- Fine
- Edition
- 1st Edition
- ISBN 10
- 0802158749
- ISBN 13
- 9780802158741
- Publisher
- Grove Press
- Place of Publication
- New York. USA
- Date Published
- 2021
- Keywords
- CLAIRE KEEGAN,SIGNED,Small Things Like These, FIRST EDITION
- Bookseller catalogs
- Irish Fiction;
Terms of Sale
Kelleher Rare Books
30 day return guarantee, with full refund including shipping costs for up to 30 days after delivery if an item arrives misdescribed or damaged.
About the Seller
Kelleher Rare Books
Biblio member since 2011
Naas, Kildare
About Kelleher Rare Books
Modern Literature, Irish, English, American,Modern first edition, first print signed fiction historical fiction, literary fiction, children's books, sci-fi, crime fiction fantasy fiction.
Glossary
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- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- Fine
- A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...
- Title Page
- A page at the front of a book which may contain the title of the book, any subtitles, the authors, contributors, editors, the...
- First State
- used in book collecting to refer to a book from the earliest run of a first edition, generally distinguished by a change in some...
- Blurb
- The blurb refers to the commentary that appears on the dust jacket flaps or the rear of the dustjacket. In the case of a...