January’s book group meeting was to discuss “Small Things like These” by Claire Keegan.
Nine of us gathered in-person plus two on Zoom.
The book was about Bill Furlong, who ran a coal merchant’s yard and it was set in a Southern Irish town in 1985.
Bill was married to Eileen and they had 5 girls – Kathleen who helped a bit in the office and Joan who both attended the Catholic school attached to the convent, plus Sheila, Grace and Loretta who were intended to follow there.
Poverty was widespread at that time but the family were relatively comfortable.
Bill’s unmarried mother was helped by her employer Mrs. Wilson, who took them in and cared for the boy when his mother died.
So he had a good childhood (except for never receiving the jigsaw for Christmas which was all he wanted).
He didn’t know who his father was. Was it Ned, the hand or was that an illusion?
He was relatively lucky.
Less so were the girls in the Magdalene laundry run by the convent nuns, using unpaid labour from destitute girls.
Unmarried pregnant girls were sent there by their families to have their babies who were then taken away for adoption.
Bill made three trips to the convent, the first two to make deliveries. The first time a girl begged him to take her away. The second time he found a girl in the coal shed and returned her to the nuns. He was disturbed by what he saw. Finally he returned on foot on Christmas Eve/morn and walked the coal-shed girl home to his own family.
The tale ends there.
There were plenty of issues to discuss:-
Why the title?
Why did the nun give Bill a card with a lot of money for his wife – a bribe?
What would we have done?
Was Bill heroic or was it an act of self-destruction?
How much did townsfolk know of what went on at the laundry and why did they all let it happen?
Two of us read out an interview with the author which was very interesting and led to some of the questions.
The author is Irish, born on a farm into the pre-EU funding poverty; she left to go to America to university, settled back later on a farm raising horses.
Her experience of Ireland around 1985 is first-hand.
All her writing is concise and short, similar to this novella. She doesn’t waste words.
Some of us welcomed this and found it easy to read.
Some had also watched the film of the book, starring Cillian Murphy (on Amazon Prime) and mostly thought it a good adaptation.
The Magdalene Laundries ran from the eighteenth century till the 1990s. We were all quite horrified at how long they went on.
Details of their history were very interesting and stark.
The laundries were ended more by the advent of washing machines than anything!
One member shared some personal experience of visiting one in England as a social worker. It wasn’t all bad!
Thank you to all of you who made this a thought-provoking and enjoyable evening.