‘Small Things Like These’ by Claire Keegan    (2021) – 114 pages

The main subject of ‘Small Things Like These’ is a Magdalene Laundry located in the small town of New Ross in Ireland in the year 1985. Magdalene Laundries were mostly Roman Catholic institutions that operated from the 18^th century to the late 20^th century, ostensibly to house and employ “fallen women”. They were often owned and operated by convents.

According to one of the girls working in this Magdalene Laundry:

Those were put in there because “they hadn’t a soul in the world to care for them. All their people did was leave them wild and then, when they got into trouble, they turned their backs.”

Many of the laundries were effectively operated as penitentiary workhouses. The young women locked up there had to work long hours, the heat in these laundries was often unbearable, and the women were subject to severe punishment. Most of the public outside figured it was OK since it was being run by the Church.

In a mass grave at the Donnybrook Cemetery in Dublin, Ireland, 155 unmarked tombs were found that touched off a scandal that exposed the horrific treatment of the inmates of these Magdalene laundries. The deaths of these women were shrouded in secrecy. The last Magdalene laundries closed in 1996.

‘Small Things Like These’ is about a husband and father with four small daughters who happens in 1985 to find out what is going on in one of these Magdalene Laundries. This man has a differing perspective than most, since his mother was left unmarried to raise him alone with the help of a kind employer.

This father is told to keep his nose out of the convent’s business:

“Tis no business of mine, as I’ve said, but surely you must know these nuns have a finger in every pie.”

Even though the events in the novel are said to take place in 1985, ‘Small Things Like These’ feels like it could have occurred a hundred years ago. The more things don’t change, the more they stay the same. Excuse me for the tautology.

Claire Keegan makes absolutely no concessions to modern attitudes or times; her scenes and her characters are almost Dickensian. Every scene, every remembrance, every sentence has a moral purpose. I’m not criticizing; it’s just that it’s an out-of-fashion way to write.

Grade:    A-