Small Things Like These
By Claire Keegan
128 pages
Published Nov. 30, 2021
Every once in a while, I read a book that makes me want to read everything the author has written. That is how I feel after reading Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These.
The Genre: Small Things Like These is only 128 pages. I’d call it a novella, but by the time I finished it, it felt like a novel. So, let’s call it a short novel. The story takes place a week before Christmas, and much of it is driven by the advent of that holiday. So, it is a Christmas story. A very good one, that will remind you immediately of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. But it reminded me, too, of O. Henry’s Gift of the Magi and short stories (whose titles I can’t remember now) by Pearl Buck, Leo Tolstoy, and Anton Chekhov. This is definitely a good book to give as a Christmas present to anyone that likes literary fiction.
The Plot: The “action” is almost entirely in the mind of the protagonist, a 40-something coal merchant living in the mid 1980s in a small town in Ireland. He is the hardworking father of four children, and the only thing he cares about is making a good living for his family. Of course, something happens, something small, that challenges that.
Critical Reception
Small Things Like These was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize and the 2022 Rathbones Folio Prize. It won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.
My Opinion
I’ve written here and there about how I judge the books I read. In general, I look at four things:
* Breadth – How well does it give me an understanding of the world the story takes place in?
* Depth – How deeply does it delve into what is sometimes called “the human condition”?
* Stickiness – How compelling is the plot? How effectively does it glue me to the page?
* Literary Style – How finely wrought is the writing?
That said, this is how I’d rate Small Things Like These:
* Breadth – 3.5 stars. While restricting the action to the week before Christmas, Claire Keegan does a surprisingly good job of painting a detailed picture of the people and culture of the town. By page 60, I felt like I knew the place all too well.
* Depth – 3.5 stars. The protagonist’s challenge, and Keegan’s handling of how he thinks about it and deals with it, took me into uncomfortable territory: recognizing how difficult it is to measure up to our personal moral standards.
* Stickiness – 3.0 stars. It’s a small story, with a minimalist plot. But it is told with such compassion and power that I was never bored.
* Literary Style – 4.0 stars. It’s been a long time since I discovered a writer that humbled me like Claire Keegan did with this book. (The last time, I think, it was Cormac McCarthy). She writes perfectly proportioned paragraphs. Beautifully simple and simply beautiful sentences.
My Overall Rating: an average of 3.875 stars
Click here to watch a video of Claire Keegan answering a few questions about the book.
