Small Things Like These By Claire Keegan!
I write this review with a bitter sweet feeling. This is one of the books, shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2022, and I had really wanted it to win the prestigious literary award. Not that the book which won the Booker ultimately (The the Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka) isn’t a great one as are the other shortlisted books. All the six shortlisted works are truly fabulous, but I feel that this novella by Claire Keegan carries a very important message.
Simply put, the message which it carries is the courage to do the ethical thing as one goes about living life. Reminiscent of Dumbledore’s sage advice to Harry Potter that “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities”, Keegan effortlessly and un-sentimentally or rather being un-preachy crafts a story that will make readers question past actions if they had ever been caught in such moral dilemmas and if they had chosen the easy way out. On the positive side, it will infuse one with determination to actively incorporate what Martin Luther King Jr had said “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends”. Such is the power of this deceptively simple novella!
Bill Furlong is a coal merchant living in New Ross, Ireland. He is happily married and has five daughters who are doing well in life just like his business is successful. But a strange sense of ennui troubles him as Christmas approaches in the winter of 1985. He is unable to set aside the fact that he doesn’t know his father for his mother had him out of wedlock and never revealed the latter’s identity. While his childhood cannot be considered ‘traumatic’ in the physical sense, for he was bestowed all sorts of kindness by rich Mrs Wilson for whom his mother worked for, nonetheless the scars of illegitimacy and burden of a lack of identity/roots tend to make him uneasy. He wonders poignantly “What was it all for? Might things never change or develop into something else, or new?”. Till one day, his unhurried and placid existence is rocked by a series of events and uncovering abuse at the local convent which also serves as a Magdalen laundry.
A part of tragic history of Ireland, Magdalen laundries were institutions in which ‘fallen’ (read: desperate and abandoned) women were incarcerated and often died. The nuns of Catholic convents/institutions ran a profitable laundry business out of the labour of these hapless women; hence, the name. While Bill Furlong realizes the terrible circumstances of the poor women trapped in the local convent in New Ross, he is unable to fathom the depths of depravity that he has witnessed. The horrifying truth is confirmed when Furlong discovers a girl locked away in the convent’s coal house, distressed, barely able to walk, and asking to see her baby. The encounter affects Furlong deeply. He introspects and soul searches at the reality facing him and his instinct to help the girl, which would add some meaning to his existence. He tries to talk to his wife about it: ‘But what if it was one of ours?’ Furlong asked. ‘’This is the very thing I ‘m saying’, she said rising again.’’Tis not one of ours.’’ He is even warned about dire consequences for his family by local people and his well-wishers for the horrific asylum laundries are run by powerful Roman Catholic institutions with state complicity. The respectability that Bill has worked so hard to maintain, namely "to keep his head down and stay on the right side of people," and to ensure his daughters' success at St. Margaret's — the only good Catholic school for girls in New Ross — puts him in an existential conundrum.
The author’s focus is not on the atrocities that were committed in these Magdalen laundries; rather, she narrates the facts mundanely, which makes it more chilling as also the abhorrent fact when the reader realizes that the Magdalen laundries flourished not only due to the cruelty of the people who ran them, but also because of the fear and selfishness of those who were willing to look aside because complicity was easier than resistance.
Unbelievably the last Magdalen laundry closed down in 1996! And then, after a passage of 17 years, the Irish government belatedly apologised to the victims in 2013! The Good Shepard church in New Ross represents both the spiritual and real worlds. While this institution claimed to uphold love, faith, and charity, its capitalist operation of the town's laundry business, in collusion with the Irish government, which is supposed to protect all citizens, to exploit and abuse downtrodden women, shows a ghastly betrayal of Christian ideals, State responsibility and most tragically humaneness.
This compact and crystallized narrative is a stunning feat of storytelling and moral clarity. The influence of Charles Dickens can be seen and many have felt that it can be read as a feminist revision of Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol'. But what thrilled me more is that the large bear prints of the great Anton Chekov can be seen all over this compelling work. Keegan confides that she is heavily influenced by the Russian master of short stories and incredible brevity of words which have the power to hit one in the guts like a sledge hammer. The literary reviewer, Andrew O’Hagan, has opined that ‘’It’s a true gift of a book…Reading it brings a sublime Chekhovian shock’’. I couldn’t agree more!
A compelling read and highly recommended, friends. I hope you read it soon! If you have already read it, I would love to know what you thought about it.
Rating: 5 *
Book review by:SunheriSufi
Faber, Hardbound, 116 Pages, Rs 599/-
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