Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Published 2022 · 112 pages · 19,584 words · about 1 hour at an average pace · Literary Fiction

How hard is Small Things Like These to read?

Small Things Like These scores 51 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 38 out of 100
Keegan employs a straightforward vocabulary, avoiding specialized or archaic language. The language is accessible and contemporary, similar to "Beach Read" in its clarity, though slightly more elevated due to the subject matter.
Sentence structure: 42 out of 100
The sentences are generally concise and direct, with a moderate use of subordination. While not as simple as "Diary of a Young Girl," the syntax is far from the complex hypotaxis of "The Golden Bowl."
Abstraction: 52 out of 100
The narrative focuses on the concrete experiences of Bill Furlong and the societal realities of the Magdalene Laundries. However, the story subtly explores themes of morality, complicity, and personal responsibility, placing it slightly above pure narrative.
Information density: 45 out of 100
The book presents a focused narrative with a limited number of characters and plotlines. While the story is emotionally resonant, it does not overwhelm the reader with a high density of concepts or historical details.
Narrative indirection: 60 out of 100
Keegan relies on implication and suggestion rather than explicit exposition. The reader must infer the full extent of the abuses at the convent and the motivations of certain characters, requiring a more active reading experience.
Symbolic density: 68 out of 100
The story employs several recurring motifs, such as the cold weather and the image of the suffering women, which carry symbolic weight. While not as overtly symbolic as "Moby-Dick," these elements contribute to a deeper understanding of the narrative's themes.
Ironic distance: 48 out of 100
There is a subtle ironic distance in the portrayal of the town's complicity and Bill Furlong's initial reluctance to intervene. The narrative invites the reader to question the characters' actions and motivations, though the emotional core remains sincere.
Resolution withholding: 62 out of 100
The ending offers a sense of hope but leaves the long-term consequences uncertain. While Bill rescues one girl, the larger problem of the Magdalene Laundries remains unresolved, creating a degree of ambiguity.
Structural complexity: 35 out of 100
The narrative follows a linear chronological structure with a single point of view. There are no significant timeline jumps or experimental formal techniques, making it a straightforward read in terms of structure.

How Small Things Like These is regarded

Small Things Like These holds a literary regard score of 51 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Prizes

Where Small Things Like These sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (36 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, Small Things Like These scores 66 out of 100. A second mythos, romance, pulls at it with a weight of 0.2. About the map of stories.

Mode: Low Mimetic
Furlong had come from nothing. Less than nothing, some might say.
Symbol: Formal
In the Square, she paused to rest at the lighted manger and stood in a type of trance, looking in.
Mythos: Ironic Tragedy iv (irony iv)
The worst was yet to come, he knew. Already he could feel a world of trouble waiting for him behind the next door
Genre: Novel + Confession
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?

Where the story of Small Things Like These takes place

  • A small Irish town, Christmas 1985, the main setting
  • Wilson's big house outside New Ross, Furlong's childhood, 1946-1958 (1946 to 1958)
  • New Ross, Co. Wexford, November-Christmas Eve 1985

6 things that are true of Small Things Like These, with the passage for each

  1. Furlong was born on 1 April 1946 to a sixteen-year-old domestic servant, and his birth certificate names no father.

    It was the first of April, 1946, and some said the boy would turn out to be a fool.

  2. Furlong and Eileen have five daughters.

    Now, he lived in the town with his wife, Eileen, and their five daughters.

  3. The story is set in 1985 and mentions Haughey and Thatcher's agreement over the North.

    It was 1985, and the young people were emigrating, leaving for London and Boston, New York.

  4. The girl is locked in the convent coal shed and says her baby, fourteen weeks old, has been taken from her.

    He’s fourteen weeks old. They’ve taken him from me now but they might let me feed him again

  5. The girl is called Enda inside the convent and her real name is Sarah Redmond.

    ‘Sarah,’ she said. ‘Sarah Redmond.’

  6. The Mother Superior gives Furlong an envelope, which turns out to contain a fifty-pound note in a Christmas card.

    When Eileen opened it and took out the card, a fifty-pound note fell into her lap.

Scenes in Small Things Like These that Frye would name

26 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Anagnorisis, untitled
‘Christ,’ he said. Discovery of the girl in the coal shed makes the hidden truth undeniable.
Pharmakos, untitled
‘Well, I’ve nobody – and all I want to do is drown meself. Can you not even do that fukken much for us?’ The convent girls are the community's scapegoats, hidden and expelled for the town's comfort.
Pharmakos, untitled
he judged, by what was on the floor, that the girl within had been there for longer than the night. The locked, soiled girl is the sacrificial victim of the institution.
Anagnorisis, untitled
and how he’d gone on, like a hypocrite, to Mass. Furlong recognises his own complicity, and the stranger's remark about Ned's likeness forces a second recognition about his father.
Alazon, untitled
‘Mister Furlong,’ she said, smiling. ‘How good you are to come and spare us your time so early on a Sunday morning.’ The Mother Superior's false graciousness and cover story make her the impostor figure.
Anagnorisis, untitled
Why were the things that were closest so often the hardest to see? He recognises Ned as likely father and the daily grace of his upbringing.

Books that share these scenes with Small Things Like These

About the author

Claire Keegan