Reading Claire Keegan's Small Things Like These at Christmastime

So already, one mid-December afternoon when I was driving home just before dusk, I happened to tune my car radio to a public radio interview with Claire Keegan, the author of Small Things Like These. 

 

I had just passed the convent that had long been the Jamaica Plain home of the Poor Clare Nuns, and I was now headed onto the Arborway.* Ahead of me lay a sea of brake lights that far outnumbered the just-coming-on Christmas lights of the houses to my left that, perched high on the hill opposite the Arnold Arboretum, easily peered into it, especially when most of the trees were bare.

 

The interview was fascinating for two reasons. The first was how determined the interviewer was to treat Keegan's novella first and foremost as an exposé of the dehumanizing horrors associated with Ireland's notorious Catholic-Church-run Magdalen Laundries. 

 

The second was how deftly, kindly, but firmly Keegan kept asserting her personal greater interest in the inner life and related actions of the novel's main character, Bill Furlong.*** As Keegan patiently explained, "But for me, it isn't a book about the laundries. For me, it's a book about a coal man who doesn't know who his father is because his mother [gave birth to him] out of wedlock. And I think it's more to do with hope and courage … I didn't want to write a story of cruelty and incarceration."** 

 

I felt like I was listening to a tug of war that the interviewer wasn't even aware was raging, so accustomed was she to assigning significance to works of literature on the basis of the degree to which social justice was their mission.

But having heard Keegan articulate what mattered to her about the novel, I knew immediately I wanted to read it. So I bought it for my husband Scott as a Christmas present, and even warned him I might read it before I wrapped it up to surprise him with it.

 

Finally, the Saturday after Christmas, I spent a perfect afternoon reading Keegan's book--perfect because of how beautiful and engrossing it was, just as its various reviewers have claimed. In fact, so drawn into it was I that the minute I finished it, I promised myself to read it again the next day. And I did.

 

Almost as soon as I'd finished relishing that second reading, my thoughts turned to that other great Irish novella set in the Christmas season--James Joyce's "The Dead." Henceforth in my mind, I knew, the twelve days of Christmas would be book-ended by these two beautiful works, each centered on a male character who is well-regarded, ill at ease, and especially ill at ease on a Christmas season evening when certain customary feelings and behaviors are expected of him.

 

Keegan's story takes place on a Christmas Eve that becomes atypical when the events of the day lead Bill Furlong to do something out of the ordinary and potentially momentous. Joyce's tale takes place at and after the annual Epiphany dinner party at which Gabriel Conroy always plays an important ceremonial role. Something important has changed at the end of both stories for both of these characters, though what will happen next is unknown.

 

As a Jewish person, I don't celebrate Christmas, but, having taught "The Dead" and T.S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi" to high school juniors and seniors so many times, I still think of it as a twelve-day holiday that culminates on January 6 with the Feast of Epiphany. More than the ox and ass that bowed at the manger and the angels whose praising and proclaiming voices filled the heavens, the magi--you may refer to them as the wise men or the three kings--have always fascinated me.

 

These wealthy men of position who traveled so long and far bearing gifts**** and who experienced, according to the gospels, the divinity of the newborn child--how did their manger-side experiences change not just their inner lives, but their public lives among those who didn't have their direct experience with the miraculous baby? What was it like for them to return to their respective kingdoms alone? What happened next for them--or, maybe even more importantly, what did they do next? Eliot hazards more of a guess about all of this than the gospels do. 

Both The Dead  and Small Things LIke These raise similar questions about what next. The particular Christmases presented yield realizations--or epiphanies--not just about the underpinnings of and expectations of the worlds in which the main characters occupy particular places, but the characters' capacities to grow, to change, and to make changes. So what effects will their insights and new understandings have on their psyches, their spirits, their lives going forward? Will they welcome and work to integrate them into their lives, or will they consciously or unconsciously let them go?

 

In both books, marriage, family, and community play central roles; the Catholic church exerts an influence; and blanketing snow galvanizes insight.*****

 

Literarily speaking, they both rely heavily on the stream of consciousness narrative technique that Joyce originated to reveal characters' states of mind. Within these chronicled inner musings are details of conversation, place, and people that both establish the main characters' personalities and sensibilities and create overall mood. As tension ebbs and flows in both works, we the readers join these characters in being ill at ease and wonder not only how their unsettled evenings will conclude, but what tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow will bring.

Interestingly, there's an actual stream in addition to that literary stream of consciousness that runs through Bill Furlong's town, or rather a river. Very early on the Sunday morning before Christmas Eve, looking down towards the River Barrow****** from the grounds of the convent, where he's gone to deliver a load of coal and which he characterizes as "still" but "not ever peaceful," Furlong muses to himself:

The day had not yet dawned, and Furlong looked down at the dark, shining river whose surface reflected equal parts of the lighted town. So many things had a way of looking finer, when they were not so close. He could not say which he rathered: the sight of town or its reflection on the water. (60)*******

There is pair of doubles in these few sentences: the town and its reflection in the river, and the things seen near and things seen far. They suggest that Furlong is already aware of decisions to be made: will he elect to see things close up and as they are, or farther away and "finer" than they are?

 

Reflections--literal and figurative--are a motif throughout the novella; more than once, they compel Furlong to encounter himself, either as he is or as a variant of himself. As he drives toward the convent on that same morning,"the reflection of Furlong's headlights crossed the window panes and it felt as though he was meeting himself there" (59). 

 

Once inside the convent, Furlong notices that "The whole place and everything in it was shining, immaculate: in some of the hanging pots, Furlong caught a glimpse of version of himself, passing" (67). But what kind of a version is it? Does Furlong see a better version of himself? a disappointing true one?********

 

 It's Furlong's acknowledgment several pages earlier that "Of late, he was inclined to imagine another life" that has sensitized the reader to language and images related to reflection, self-inquiry, and self-regard. Keegan establishes the motif subtly, almost inconspicuously, but we perceive it and sense the way it heightens Furlong's profound uneasiness that seems to be asking for release or resolution.

And that's the way this book works. Details and images are pebbles that Keegan drops into still water. Though they fall separately, almost unobtrusively, and nearly silently, the gentle circular ripples********** they create spread out and invariably overlap. The result is the sense that all of these "small things" are interconnected and important to moving the story and the lives it portrays forward.

Take for example the details related to haircuts and people who cut hair. In the first third of the novel, Furlong's wife reports that the son of the local barber has an aggressive form of cancer that will kill him within the year (37). Soon thereafter, Furlong recalls a recent visit to the convent to make a coal delivery during which he encountered several young women scrubbing the chapel floor. Though one of their number whose hair had been "roughly cut, as though someone blind had taken to it with a shears" had asked for his help, he had not given it (43). 

 

On a morning closer to Christmas, Furlong  again heads to the convent to make a delivery--and encounters either the same girl or a different girl with "roughly cut hair." This time, he does intervene on her behalf, though not in the way she asks him to (62)--which haunts him later. 

 

On Christmas Eve, after the snow has started to fall, and upon catching his reflection--another reflection!--in a mirror in a store window, Furlong decides he needs a haircut and heads to the barbershop where the barber whose son has not long to live "nodded solemnly at Furlong in the mirror" (103). There is so much silent suffering in the shadows of the holiday bustle--as if the customers in the barber shop fear the holiday magic would dissipate if they took a moment to acknowledge the barber will soon become one more parent in the story who has been forcefully separated from his child.

Photo of the Holiday Card from My Friend Elizabeth

A little later as the snow continues to accumulate, Furlong, like the magi, journeys from home toward a place where one might hope and expect to find the presence of God, especially as expressed in human compassion and kindness--namely a convent. But Furlong already does not experience the particular convent toward which he's heading as a place of peace and caring, and he has recently been recognizing that people often collude to hide harsh truths out of fear, convenience, or unexamined indifference. 

 

Once he arrives at the convent, he re-encounters the girl with the hacked hair. What happens next you will need to read the book to find out.

 

It's small things like these--these details of action, thought, and observation--that, first, establish that Bill Furlong is at a inflection point in his life, and second, propel both him and his story forward as he grapples with all that is at stake. The question of how and whether he can respond is a separate one, which reading this book will answer for you, or at least begin to answer--since what happens beyond its last page is a further question, one T.S. Eliot would have recognized.

 

How interesting--and rare--that a work of literature should have a title that suggests both its message about the stuff and nature of human lives, and the literary means by which it conveys that message. It's as if the method and the message are perfectly matched. And there is reason for hope, despite the cold and darkness of the winter nights portrayed.

 

I  hope you'll read--and maybe even reread--Clair Keegan's Small Things Like These, if you haven't already. For one thing, I'd love to know how you interpret the many crows in the novella. Meanwhile, Happy Feast of Epiphany, if you celebrate it. 

 

* Collage created from three screen shots from the following websites: https://arboretum.harvard.edu/stories/portals-of-wonder-and-welcome/, https://www.etsy.com/listing/716230349/christmas-lights-svg-christmas-light-svg, and https://mass.streetsblog.org/2023/11/21/revised-arborway-bus-plan-would-make-room-for-hundreds-of-new-transit-oriented-homes

** Becker, D. & Tamagawa, E. (2024, December 11). Claire Keegan's 'Small things like these' is having a moment. In Here & Now. WBUR Studios. https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2024/12/11/small-things-like-these

BU

*** Screen shot of Enda Bowe/Lionsgate photo of Cillian Murphy accompanying the following article: Wilkinson, A. (2024, November 7). 'Small Things Like These’ Review: The Fears of a Watchful Father. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/07/movies/small-things-like-these-review-cillian-murphy.html

**** James Tissot: The Magi Journeying (c. 1890), Brooklyn Museum, New York City: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Magi#/media/File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_The_Magi_Journeying_(Les_rois_mages_en_voyage)_-_James_Tissot_-_overall.jpg

***** Screen shot of photo accompanying the following: McCarthy, D. (2010, March 18). “Snow was general all over Ireland…” The last paragraph of Joyce’s The dead. Medium. https://medium.com/drmstream/snow-was-general-all-over-ireland-the-last-paragraph-of-joyces-the-dead-48b08b4c3b1f

*(6) Recolored screen shot on the following website. The townn is Athy, and it is on the Barrow River. https://www.waterwaysireland.org/our-waterways/barrow-navigation/the-barrow-way/athy*

*(7) Keegan, C. (2021). Small things like these. Grove Press.

*(8) Screen shot of a photo of a hanging rack of pots and pans available from Wayfair.

*(9) Screen shot of photo on chipcoffeeblog on tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/chipcoffeyblog/93595106358/dropping-pebbles-in-the-pond-the-ripple-effect-is

*(10) Screen shot of photo on the following website: Crider, A. (2019, April 10). Is crow hunting worth my time? Project Upland. https://projectupland.com/migratory-bird-species/crow-hunting/is-crow-hunting-worth-my-time/