Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

It is Christmas 1985 in a small Irish town, and coal merchant Bill Furlong moves through his busiest season with the quiet rhythms of habit and routine. As he makes his rounds delivering fuel to the homes and institutions of his community, he feels the past rising up to meet him. A delivery to the local convent reveals something he can no longer ignore—a truth that shatters the comfortable silence that has long protected his town from reckoning with itself.

In a place where silence is safety and complicity is custom, one man must decide what decency demands. Claire Keegan's acclaimed novella is spare, luminous and devastating in its clarity—a story about moral courage, quiet acts of resistance, and the profound cost of looking away. With the precision of a short story and the resonance of a classic, it asks how goodness survives in a world that would rather not see. An unforgettable winter read and a modern Irish classic, Small Things Like These reveals how the smallest choices can ripple outward to change everything. Perfect for readers of Sebastian Barry and Colm Tóibín, and for anyone who believes that decency matters.

Winner of the Orwell Prize and the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year. A Sunday Times Top 5 Novel of the Twenty-First Century. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Now a major motion picture starring Cillian Murphy.