Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan was a book mentioned to me by no less than three people in the space of as many months. They extolled its virtues: a tiny book that speaks so much in its brevity; leaves you thinking about it long after you close the cover, etc… I borrowed a copy and immediately I saw what they meant.

It is, indeed, a slim volume at just 110 pages. Published in 2021, it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize the following year. It’s one of those books where much of the ‘action’ is interior, inside the main character’s head. In this case, the head of Bill Furlong, father of five in a small Irish town in 1985.

He’s the town’s coal and timber merchant and his days consist of work – loading up pallets of wood and bags of coal, driving his small truck to deliver them to the homes and businesses that rely on his wares to keep warm through the bleak Irish winters – then home to scrb the black coal dust from his hands and eat a meal in the tiny kitchen with his wife Eileen and their five daughters.

He’s a good family man, quietly spoken and thoughtful. Occasionally he finds himself wondering ‘is this all there is?’ when he contemplates life’s purpose. But he knows he and his family are more fortunate than many, they have a loving home and food on the table.

Still, he is troubled by flashbacks to his childhood, so different to that of his daughters. Raised by an unmarried mother who died when he was just a young lad, he was lucky to be allowed to stay on at the home where his mother had been employed by a wealthy woman. A woman with more enlightened views on unmarried mothers, he realises now, as an adult. The other figure in his childhood was Ned, also an employee on the property, a man whom Bill looked up to and admired. Bill never knew who his father was: no one talked about things like that.

His quiet, predictable routine is severely disrupted when, while delivering coal to the Catholic convent, he stumbles across a teenaged girl locked in the coal shed. The nuns insist it was an accident that she was caught there overnight – on a freezing night in the lead up to Christmas – but Bill is not convinced.

So begins a period in which this quiet man wrestles with his conscience. The convent and the nuns who run it wield a power over the town: the neighbouring school, which Bill’s daughters attend, the choir, so much of the residents’ welfare seems to be inextricably linked to the church. As the publican says to Bill:
”Tis no business of mine, as I’ve said, but surely you must know these nuns have a finger in every pie.’ (p94)

Bill realises that the entire town, his wife included, are complicit in what might be going on behind the heavy doors and walls of the convent. Turning a blind eye allows whatever cruelities and neglect to continue. And, as this story is about the horrors perpetuated by what became known as the ‘Magdalene Laundries’ of Irish Catholic convents, there were cruelties and neglect aplenty – from the 1920s right through to the 1990s, according to the film’s dedication. Horrific stuff.

So, this brings me to the film adaptation of this wonderful little book. I was keen to see the movie for several reasons.

One, because the two leading stars are Cillian Murphy of Peaky Blinders and Oppenheimer fame (and frankly he is such a compelling actor I think I would pay money to watch him watching paint dry!); the other is Emily Watson who is one of my favourite British actors. Although when I realised she was playing the clever, cold nun at the head of the convent I was at first horrified – but she is such a consummate actor that even her normally sweet face was transformed into something else entirely.

Two, I was curious to see how the filmakers would transfer a novel like this to the screen. How to portray Bill’s inner struggle when the raw material of the book is a tiny setting, a few days, a handful of characters?

The answer, for me, was – brilliantly. The director Tim Mielants and cinematographer Frank van den Eeden capture the bleak grey of the Irish town in winter, the way the townsfolk ‘unhappily endured the weather‘ (p1), the routines of everyday life. There’s a scene in which the camera pans over Bill’s face – beautifully half lit by a street light as he sits in his darkened house, alone in the deep of night – and we can almost see the thoughts move across his face.

Best of all, for me, was the choice of scriptwriter Enda Walsh and director to keep faithfully to Claire Keegan’s ending. It is a somewhat ambiguous climax: Bill has acted in accordance with his own moral certainty, we know it is the right thing for the young woman he rescues from the convent, but the book’s readers (and film’s audience) cannot be certain of the reception she’ll receive from Bill’s family and, indeed, the rest of the town. We hope, but we cannot be sure.

Some viewers at the cinema I attended apparently thought the film ‘too grim’ (accordingly to the cinema proprietor) but I was glad that the film reproduced the intent and tone of Keegan’s ‘perfect little book’ in the way that it did.

So, while I am sometimes disappointed in film adaptations of books that I have loved, this time I can honestly say: read the book AND see the film. Both well worth it.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan was published by Faber & Faber in 2021.
The film adaptation , a joint production by Artists Equity & Big Things Productions, was released in 2024.