Small Things Like These

Hello Gentle Reader,                                   

When a writer is described as having a ‘economic style,’ or employing an ‘economy of words,’ to their work, it always rings with an unintended insult. The term economic is draped in dry connotations of accountancy, with all the recording of debits and credits. A subject completely deprived of a sense of excitement, glamour, or sparkle, resting instead on the well-worn tried and true grounds of dependability and practicalities. While when a writer’s work is described as ‘minimalist,’ it carries similar connotations, leading prospective readers to summarize or assume the work is simple, or without flare or linguistic brilliance, and more reminiscent of a bleached bone, structurally sound and certainly the necessary scaffolding for biological existence, but completely lacking in essence of life. The notion of literary addition by subtraction, has always felt like an overused concept. Hemmingway reductionisms looms and lurks within a variety of literary contexts, with the continued less is more style being considered the benchmark for greatness. While Hemmingway had his merits, blending the journalistic language of reportage with its natural ease and clarity of vision with the artifice of the literary, its continued proliferation and imitation of form and style as the yardstick for greatness, has become cliché, overwrought and overdone, to the point its cheapened and discounted. In a manner similar to anything mass produced and imitated, its charm and quality depreciates before being refined into a manufactured manicured commodity. Poets—and more frequently, short story writers—are often referred to as maestros of the economic literary format, where subtraction is the format and default state of the short story. Despite existing in an otherwise terse and acerbic form, the short story is not a format resting on the butcher’s block waiting to be trimmed, severed, and cut back. The short story is not a voracious vulture’s soliloquy. The short story is a form for mastery. It’s not the tadpole of prose; the juvenile scribblers workbook; or the apprenticeship of the writer. The short story is a form requiring the technical expertise of a clockmaker, in order to understand the intricacies and details to propel the narrative forward; while incorporating a jeweler’s eye for finish and presentation. 

Claire Keegan is a virtuoso of short stories technical brilliance. Keegan knows when to utilize a draughtman’s touch, etching out a hardedge line bold and defined, and then moving to a faint shading, ghostly impressions fading into insinuation. The craftsman brilliance is beautiful, and while the language maintains precision to the point of being lean, it is by no means the product of a misers’ penny-pinching economic principles. Keegan knows when to define and when to insinuate; how a striking image is enough to set the scene without being burdened by details; while being a writer of immense empathetic capacity, fleshing out characters with human contrariness. Still, as a writer, Claire Keegan understands the mechanical operations of narrative and form. Reading Keegan provides textbook examples of foreshadowing and expertise in tension. Perhaps this is due to Keegan’s own role as a teacher, where she deconstructs a short story or sentence allowing her students to pull back the curtains revealing all the gears and pullies at work maintaining the narrative. Though Claire Keegan is considered a contemporary master of the Irish Short Story tradition, with her reputation established with two brutal short story collections “Antarctica,” and “Walk the Blue Fields,” both were applauded for being harsh and honest tour de forces; Keegan has proven that her narratives are not limited by form, but are enriched by them. In a similar manner to a pond, Keegan’s narratives surface area is intimate in scope, but expands when reflecting the sky and concealing deepening depths below. The generosity and moral vision of the sky and the lurking mundane darkness, are two oppositional forces of Keegan’s debut novel “Small Things Like These,” where Bill Furlong a coal merchant both embraces and confronts these oppositional realities within his small Irish village, New Ross.

“Small Things Like These,” is set in 1985, and despite being set almost forty years ago, there is a sensation and feeling that New Ross has yet to enter the modern world. An atmosphere of raw hardship and pitiless poverty not only shrouds the village, but is a bleak defining feature. While time is stagnant, whereby one would easily hear with regular assurance that the villagers adhere to ‘the ol’ ways,’ or ‘live a traditional life,’ this otherwise conservative attitude have frozen New Ross into a time capsule. Bill Furlong is a coal merchant, a profession brining to mind otherwise Dickensian and Victorian sentiments. Though Furlong’s business is diversified beyond coal (though it’s the bread and butter of winter) and includes turf, anthracite, slack and logs; in addition to briquettes, kindling and bottled gas. The novel opens with a beautiful expedited time lapse describing the golden October trees lost along with the hour of a return to standard time, and further stripped bare by the unrelenting northern November winds. Despite owning and running his own business, Bill Furlong’s life is far from easy, and as winter settles over New Ross, what can be described as the busy season sets in. Everyday residents place orders for fuel, and Furlong provides the product. Of course, the product must be weighted, packaged, accounted for, invoiced, and then delivered. Despite having a natural talent and good head for business, Furlong is a man not deprived of a rich interior world or bouts of genuine generosity, having been the recipient of such sincere kindness, which inevitably afforded him further opportunities. This does not mean Bill Furlong’s life was not without challenges. The bastard son of an unwed mother, both mother and child were spared the full retribution of their situation in part thanks to a wealthy Protestant widow (Mrs. Wilson), who kept Furlong’s mother as a domestic servant, and provided a warm and welcoming home for both. The absent father remains a shadowing mark on Furlong’s character, as recounted when visiting the registry office to obtain his birth certificate the space for father was filled in with: “unknown,” which the clerk handed over to Furlong with a knowing smug smirk. As a child Furlong remembers the unknown and absent father makes him a target, as in the incident when the other boys at his school covered the back of his coat in spit. Still, childhood inevitably ended, and Furlong married the practical and stoically sensible Eileen and fathered five daughters. In essence becoming a respectable man of the community, and is treated as such. His customers are loyal, and Furlong in turn tries to support and forgive where he can; as Eileen acknowledges, it is Bill’s business and tireless work ethic which has allotted them the breathing room to avoid living on credit and dodging financial ruin and the creditors squeeze. Their financial independence secures their modest luxuries and life.

A shadow exists on the outskirts of New Ross, the Good Shepherds Convent looms in the distance, being both a dominating reminder of the church in the everyday life of the residents of New Ross, and sovereign independent institution of the community, providing an education for the resident’s girls and daughters, while also operating a laundry, which everyone sends there linens up to, as it comes back as if new. Despite the good in its name, and its presentation of being a pinnacle member of the community, the convent was also notorious with nefarious whispers discussed regarding the laundry business and the wayward girls it supposedly saved and employed. When Bill Furlong is to make a delivery to the convent, he is reminded of an earlier incident, when the heavenly principled institution found itself slightly exposed. In an inner garden and orchard, Bill Furlong is confronted by one of the charges of the convent, a poor desperate waif who begs him to help her escape, if only so she could kill herself, fling herself into the River Barrow and be done with the whole ordeal. In a manner fitting any man of good grace, Bill is unobliging of the request, but shares his concerns and even offers to help mediate a resolve for the young woman, who crumples at the sight and sound of a nun. It is then and there that Bill Furlong takes stock of the caricature of Eden. Though the convent strikes a powerful and romantic image, being compared at one point to the likes of a Christmas card, it lacks the sentiment of goodwill and peace on earth. Broken glass coronates the tops of walls, and Furlong grows increasingly suspicious of the locks in all their formats barring entrance and departure from the grounds. When this event is brought up to Eileen, she responds with the darkening (though understandable) caution and stiffening resolve:

            “If you want to get on with life, there’s things you have to ignore, so you can keep on.”

Bill inevitably disagrees (and for good reason) defending the kindness and resolve of the late Mrs. Wilson, who not only spared his life, but also his mother’s from indentured incarceration; while their lives were not easy or carefree, it was more agreeable then the alternative glimpsed in the convent. This early introduction into the convents harsh realities sets the stage for another climatic confrontation with the convents open secret, and the nuns, whose supposed Christian good nature and impeccable and unimpeachable moral resolutions, are not only brought into question but are found to be bankrupt. The otherwise hallow halls hollowed out, deprived of good will and charity and replaced with cruelty on an industrial scale.

“Small Things Like These,” is Claire Keegan’s debut novel, though it does not read like a debut. Its solid and sturdy, full of succinct and crystalline language. Keegans understanding of the technicalities and mechanical operations of narrative and literary form are on full display in this beautiful novel. Despite being only just over a hundred pages long, “Small Things Like These,” cannot be described as airy or insubstantial. It’s a novel of careful shading and insinuation, but also natural, fixating on tense moments and provide the necessary details to set the scene and the table. The novel has a rotten dark underbelly to it, and the lack of modern sensibilities and permeated the novel like a frost, curating the atmosphere of austerity and life as a test of endurance and penance; but it is full of enriching warm scenes, such as when the Furlong family makes a Christmas cake. As for Bill Furlong, he is agreeable and good company. A man not privy to the stoic marrow and resolve of the Irish, but who offers generosity without any ulterior motives. Who kindles hope (however small and feathered it may be), and perhaps slips into sentimentality and yearning when it comes to his family. The fact that Bill Furlong was the main character and the driving force of the novel not only propelled the novel to a sense of measured optimism, but ensured it was not drowning in the tar of a dour vicious narrative hellbent on not only autopsying the infamous Magdalene Laundries of Ireland, but making it a blatant hit job. Keegan expertly dissects the church’s unchecked power, but does not let the examination pull away from the human elements of the narrative. Instead, Claire Keegan is more subtle, sketching imagery and scenes to provide the context to the narrative with great success. “Small Things Like These,” is an absolute gem of a novel, and perhaps can be read within an hour or two, but I enjoyed savouring it over the course of three evenings.

Thank you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary