Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Thursday, July 28, 2022--San Antonio

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan was nominated for the Booker Prize this week.  It's a short book (the shortest to ever be nominated for the prize) at 128 pages long, but it is a wonderful book--a well written and an inspiring story set in Ireland during the Christmas season.  Although fiction, it is based on the true story of how the Irish Government, in cooperation with the Catholic Church, ran laundries that took advantage of young girls who had been abandoned or entrusted to the church, especially ones who became pregnant out of marriage.  Emphasis is placed on how this was inconsistent with the statement of human rights adopted by the government, yet the government went many years without apologizing as research turned up large numbers of persons who disappeared (died?) while at these facilities.  (It was an Irish embarrassment much like that faced by the U.S., Canadian, and Australian governments for how they forced indigenous children into schools where rights were abused and atrocities occurred.)  But as I wrote before, the novel is delightful and enlightening while not turning away from the truth of what happened at the laundries.  I gave the book 5 stars out of 5.