Small Things Like These: Moral Courage in the Face of Community Silence
The Art of Pacing
How Claire Keegan Makes a Novella Feel Epic.
Book Review and Podcast by Gary Crossey.
Reading "Small Things Like These" is a masterclass in how literary pacing can transform a slim volume into an expansive experience. At just over 100 pages, Keegan's novella feels remarkably substantial—not because of plot complexity, but through her meticulous attention to environmental detail.
The opening line of "Small Things Like These" — "In October, there were yellow trees" — is deceptively simple yet masterfully strategic. Keegan begins with the natural world and its seasonal transitions, immediately establishing several key elements that will shape the entire novella:
This opening creates a temporal framework. By starting with October and quickly moving to November, Keegan establishes both cyclical time (the changing seasons) and linear time (the progression toward winter). This reflects Bill Furlong's life — caught between the cyclical routines of work and family and the linear progression toward his moral awakening.
The image of trees being "stripped bare" by November winds foreshadows the stripping away of social pretenses that occurs throughout the story. Just as the winds reveal the bare structure of the trees, Furlong's journey reveals the bare moral structure of his community. Beginning with nature rather than people suggests something primal and universal about the story to follow. Before we meet any characters or see any human constructions, we encounter the natural world operating according to its own rhythms. This establishes a moral baseline against which the artificial hierarchies and cruelties of the human world will be measured.
The stark contrast between the "yellow trees" of October and the "bare" trees of November establishes the novella's central tension between beauty and harshness, between what is pleasant to look at and what is stripped of all ornament. This mirrors Furlong's journey from comfortable ignorance to stark moral reckoning.
This opening line demonstrates Keegan's extraordinary economy as a writer. In just a few words about trees and seasons, she creates the foundation for the novella's exploration of time, revelation, nature versus social construction, and the tension between comfortable illusion and stark reality.
Unlike many contemporary writers who prioritize action and character development, Keegan spends significant time establishing the physical world of New Ross. Consider how she introduces the town:
"Most of the shops and businesses in town had Christmas trees or decorations in their windows, and colored lights had been strung across the streets. Frost had settled on the bridge, on the back of the horse at the monument, on the cannon, giving the town a magical appearance."
These detailed observations create a sense of place so vivid that the town itself becomes a character—one whose "magical appearance" stands in stark contrast to the horrors hidden within its convent walls. Keegan's decision to linger on physical descriptions serves a dual purpose: it establishes the rhythms of Furlong's observant nature and creates an atmosphere of normality that makes the revelations more shocking.
The pacing feels deliberately measured, mirroring the slow-moving routines of rural Irish life in the 1980s. When Bill delivers coal to the convent, Keegan doesn't rush through the encounter. Instead, she details every moment:
"He made his way down the corridor, through a big, well-lit room where six young women sat behind sewing machines with their heads down, stitching... A radiator hissed in the kitchen, and the big pot on the range sent out a good smell of something cooking for their dinner."
This methodical approach makes the novella feel more expansive than its page count suggests. By the time we reach the climactic moment of Bill discovering Sarah in the coal shed, we've become so immersed in the rhythms of this world that the impact is devastating.
Fiction Reflecting Truth: The Historical Context of "Small Things Like These"
With the 2024 film adaptation bringing renewed attention to this story, it's worth examining how closely Keegan's fiction mirrors historical reality. The Magdalene Laundries operated in Ireland from the 18th century until 1996, when the last one closed. During this period, an estimated 30,000 women were confined in these institutions.
What's striking about Keegan's portrayal is how accurately she captures not just the institutional abuse, but the community's complicity through silence. The townspeople in the novella who know what happens at the convent but choose to look away reflect the real historical dynamic in communities across Ireland.
My own experience in Ireland in the 1980s aligns with the world Keegan depicts. Despite being a decade of global change—with Live Aid concerts, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and rapid technological advancement—parts of rural Ireland remained remarkably traditional, almost frozen in time. The conservative Catholic influence that allowed institutions like the Magdalene Laundries to flourish continued to shape community responses to social issues.
This historical accuracy extends to the aftermath. The man I encountered at St. Luke's, institutionalized for decades without just cause, represents thousands of similar stories that received little public attention. When investigations finally led to his release, it wasn't headline news. Like many victims of Ireland's institutional system, he was quietly moved to assisted living—a solution that, while removing him from explicit abuse, still controlled his housing, resources, and ultimately, his agency.
This pattern of "managing" victims rather than truly empowering them or acknowledging the systemic injustice mirrors what we might imagine happens after the close of Keegan's novella. When Bill Furlong takes Sarah home, he knows "a world of trouble lay before him." The institutional powers—both religious and social—would have worked to minimize disruption and maintain control.
What makes Keegan's work so powerful is how it connects these historical truths to universal questions of moral responsibility. Through Bill Furlong's awakening, she asks readers: What would you have done? Would you have been one of the silent townspeople, or would you have found the courage to act?
This question remains painfully relevant. Even as we recognize historical injustices, new forms of institutionalized suffering continue today, often maintained through the same mechanisms of community silence and selective blindness that Keegan so masterfully portrays.
TRANSCRIPT: Small Things
Hello and welcome to "Better World with Design," where I explore books that move us, challenge us, and make us see the world differently. I'm Gary Crossey, and today I'm diving into Claire Keegan's powerful novella, "Small Things Like These."
Before I get into my thoughts on this remarkable book, I want to thank everyone in the Sandy Mush Book Club for selecting this title. It's one that resonates with me in ways that are both personal and profound.
Set in New Ross, Ireland, Keegan's novella follows Bill Furlong, a coal merchant who discovers a young girl locked in a coal shed at a local convent during the Christmas season. This discovery forces him to confront a moral crisis - speak out against powerful institutions or remain silent like the rest of his community.
Now, let me give yeh a wee quick rundown of this book
Set in the winter of 1985 Ireland, this wee gem of a novella follows Bill Furlong, a coal merchant who stumbles upon something shocking at the local convent during Christmas time - a discovery that forces him to confront his community's shared silence about institutional abuse.
Keegan's writing is like a good Irish whiskey - smooth yet powerful. There's a quiet intensity to her prose that builds tension throughout. Nothing flashy here, just carefully chosen words and meaningful pauses that speak volumes about the moral struggles her characters face.
The book digs into that age-old Irish struggle between doing what's right and keeping your head down. It explores moral courage versus social conformity, the dark legacy of Ireland's church-run institutions, how small acts of resistance can matter, and the way your own history shapes the choices you make. At its heart, it's about that collective silence we all know too well - when everyone sees something wrong but nobody speaks up.
The story unfolds over just a few winter days, with a methodical pace that mirrors Furlong's own careful thinking. Like a good winter's walk, it takes its time but creates a growing sense of urgency as Christmas approaches. This slow burn lets you fully experience Furlong's internal struggle before he makes his big decision.
The book shines a light on Ireland's Magdalene Laundries and mother-baby homes - those church-run institutions where "fallen women" were locked away and exploited. It's a national trauma that we Irish have only recently started talking about properly.
What struck me immediately about this book is how Keegan captures the essence of Irish silence - that cultural tendency to look away, to not speak of difficult things. Growing up in Ireland, I was deeply familiar with this silence, though I didn't fully understand its weight until years later.
My own grandmother used to tell a story about the parish priest who would visit their home. In those days, people would keep their rent money on the mantel above the fireplace. During one visit, the priest took that money - money that was meant for their landlord - leaving my grandmother with nine children and no way to pay the rent. Yet, despite this betrayal, my grandmother attended Mass nearly every morning. This contradiction always puzzled me as a child.
The older folk in our community understood the abuses happening around them, but there was this strange complicity of silence. Furlong's struggle in the book - seeing something wrong and grappling with whether to act - mirrors this national characteristic that shadowed my childhood.
When I think about the Magdalene Laundries and mother and baby homes depicted in the book, I'm reminded how these institutions existed in plain sight in Ireland, yet they were rarely discussed. The dedication at the beginning of the book acknowledges "the women and children who suffered time in Ireland's mother and baby homes and Magdalene laundries." These places were known to exist, but they existed in a strange parallel reality - seen but unseen, known but unacknowledged.
I had a formative experience during my high school work placement at St. Luke's mental institution in Armagh. Before I went there, all I knew were the crude jokes that circulated about the place - the kind of gallows humor that often masks deeper discomfort with difficult realities.
But what I found was completely different from what those jokes suggested. I met one particular gentleman in his sixties who was awaiting his first real home assignment. It had been discovered that this man had been placed in the institution as a young adult and had spent over 40 years incarcerated for no reason other than his family didn't want him in public. He was described as "slightly simple," but he was incredibly attractive and kind.
For decades, this gentle soul had to endure living in an institution where he was surrounded by people who were clinically insane, often loud and disruptive, which ultimately impacted his own mental health. His story haunted me - here was someone who had been forgotten by society, hidden away because he didn't fit neatly into what was considered "normal."
In "Small Things Like These," Bill Furlong finds himself at a similar crossroads when he discovers the young girl locked in the coal shed. The pivotal moment comes when he must decide whether to follow the community's pattern of looking away or to take action. Keegan writes: "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?"
This question strikes at the heart of the moral dilemma faced not just by Furlong, but by entire generations of Irish people who knew of these institutions and the abuses that occurred within them, yet remained silent.
My parents, like many of their generation, never shared Irish Catholic stories of this nature. The institutional abuses, the church's power, the complicity of communities - these weren't dinner table conversations. It wasn't until I discovered artists like Sinead O'Connor that I began to understand Irish nationalism and the complex relationship between Irish identity, Catholicism, and resistance.
I remember O'Connor tearing up the Pope's picture on American television - an act that was met with widespread condemnation at the time but, in retrospect, was a brave stand against institutional abuse that few were willing to acknowledge. She paid a heavy price for speaking out before society was ready to hear the truth.
My father's nationalism was different - more symbolic than substantive. It was encapsulated in his hand-painted parade sash with Republican ideology. He honored the garment more than the notion behind it. It was a surface-level expression that didn't delve into the deeper, more uncomfortable truths about our country's history.
Living now in Sandy Mush, a small, remote community similar in some ways to the town in Keegan's novella, I see parallels that are both comforting and disturbing. Small communities can be nurturing, supportive environments, but they can also harbor the same dynamics of power and silence that Keegan portrays.
In our book club discussions, we've talked about how leaders of small community groups can sometimes bully and dominate the general community. There's that same fear of being isolated or singled out that leads to complicity. People become bystanders, unwilling to challenge problematic behaviors because of the social consequences.
Like most effective bullies, these individuals have techniques of placement that allow their abusive behavior to continue unchecked. They create systems where their actions are normalized, where speaking out feels more transgressive than the harmful behavior itself.
What makes "Small Things Like These" so powerful is that it centers on one person who goes beyond these social constraints to make the right choice - the definitive choice. While those around him - the townspeople he meets on the street - can't stop themselves long enough to see the injustice happening before their eyes, Furlong breaks the cycle.
Keegan's portrayal of the bystanders in the story is particularly striking. As Furlong walks through town with Sarah, the girl he's rescued, people react in telling ways: Furlong met people he had known and dealt with for the greater part of his life, most of whom gladly stopped to speak until looking down. There they saw the bare black feet and realized the girl with him was not one of his own. Some then gave them a wide berth or talked awkwardly or politely wished him a happy Christmas and went on.
This moment captures the essence of communal complicity - the conscious decision to look away, to pretend not to see, to maintain the comfortable fiction that everything is as it should be. It's a dynamic I've observed in communities everywhere, including here in Sandy Mush.
One elderly woman in the story directly confronts Furlong, asking who the girl is and if she's "one of those ones from the laundry." This character represents the rare individual who acknowledges what others pretend not to see, yet even she doesn't take action beyond questioning.
In our book club discussions, we've talked about what causes people to seek out small communities to bully and dominate others. Is it a desire for control that's easier to obtain in a small pond? Is it that small communities often lack the oversight mechanisms of larger societies? Or is it something deeper about human nature - the tendency to exploit power when accountability is limited?
I think about the system that allowed my high school acquaintance to be institutionalized for decades simply because he was "different." I think about the mothers and children in the Magdalene Laundries and mother and baby homes. I think about how entire communities knew of their existence but continued with daily life as if nothing was amiss.
And I wonder: How many Bill Furlongs were there in reality? How many people saw these injustices and felt that pull to do something but ultimately looked away? And how many found the courage to act, to make what Keegan calls "the definitive choice"?
In the book, Furlong thinks: "How light and tall he almost felt walking along with this girl at his side and some fresh, new, unrecognizable joy in his heart. Was it possible that the best bit of him was shining forward and surfacing some part of him, whatever it could be called? Was there any name for it was going wild?"
This passage beautifully captures the liberation that comes with moral courage, with choosing to do right even when it goes against social expectations. It suggests that in breaking free from the constraints of communal silence, we access something essential within ourselves.
There's a moment in the book when Furlong thinks about Mrs. Wilson, the woman who employed his unwed mother and provided them both with a home: "Had it not been for her, his mother might very well have wound up in that place. In an earlier time, it could have been his own mother he was saving.
This realization represents a key theme in the book - the interconnectedness of human experience across time. Furlong recognizes that the girl he's helping could have been his mother in different circumstances, or that he himself could have ended up institutionalized had Mrs. Wilson not shown kindness to his family.
It's this recognition of our shared humanity that ultimately drives Furlong's decision to act. He sees beyond the social categories that allow others to dismiss the girl as "one of those ones from the laundry" and recognizes her as someone deserving of dignity and care.
In our small community here in Sandy Mush, I've observed how easy it is for people to be categorized and dismissed - as newcomers or outsiders, as troublemakers or non-conformists. These labels make it easier to ignore the humanity of others, to justify treating them as less worthy of consideration.
What "Small Things Like These" reminds us is that moral courage often comes down to seeing past these categories to the individual human being. It's about recognizing, as Furlong does, that "the worst that could have happened was also already behind him, a thing not done which could have been, which he would have had to live with for the rest of his life."
The weight of inaction - of knowing you could have helped but chose not to - is ultimately greater than the consequences of speaking out.
I wonder about the people in my grandmother's community who must have known the priest was taking money from vulnerable families. I wonder about the staff at St. Luke's who knew that the gentle man I met had no reason to be there. I wonder about the neighbors and townspeople who lived near the Magdalene Laundries and heard the cries or saw the unmarked graves.
How many of them carried the weight of that knowledge, that "thing not done which could have been," throughout their lives?
As we conclude our book club discussion on "Small Things Like These," I'm left pondering what this story means for us today, in our own community. What injustices might we be overlooking? What silences are we maintaining? What moral courage might be required of us?
The beauty of Keegan's novella is that it doesn't provide easy answers. Furlong's choice to take Sarah home with him is presented as complex and fraught with consequences. The ending is ambiguous, with Furlong aware that "a world of trouble" awaits him. Yet there's also hope in his belief that "they would manage."
Perhaps that's the most powerful message of the book - that addressing injustice isn't about grand heroic gestures but about small things, like seeing someone's humanity when others look away, like choosing action over comfortable inaction, like believing that somehow, despite the difficulties, we will manage.
In our small community in Sandy Mush, as in communities everywhere, we have daily opportunities to make these choices. We can look away from the bullying behaviors of community leaders, or we can speak up. We can categorize and dismiss those who are different, or we can see their full humanity. We can maintain comfortable silences, or we can have difficult conversations about power, complicity, and moral responsibility.
I'm grateful to Claire Keegan for writing a book that speaks so powerfully to these themes, and to our Sandy Mush book club for choosing it. Through our discussions, we've created a space to explore difficult topics with honesty and compassion. Diana Simpson deserves special recognition for her leadership in bringing our community together for these meaningful conversations. Her dedication to fostering thoughtful discussion and creating an inclusive environment has made our book club a place where everyone feels welcome to share their perspectives.
Stories like "Small Things Like These" serve as mirrors, reflecting our own experiences and challenging us to examine our communities more deeply. They remind us that moral courage often begins with small acts of recognition and resistance against injustice.
Thank you for joining me for this reflection. Until next time, I'm Gary Crossey, encouraging you to find courage in small things. For additional resources related to this book discussions and upcoming community events, please visit the Sandy Mush Community Center website.
