Praise for Small Things Like These: An NPR “Books We Love” of 2021 selection

A Chicago Public Library “Best of the Best” of 2021 selection

People Magazine**’s “Book of the Week”**

A Publishers Weekly "Holiday Gift Guide 2021" Selection****

“For all her earlier accolades, Small Things Like These, Keegan’s first novel, enters the world this month with the shocking force of a debut…Over what would amount to a couple of chapters in another novel, Keegan manages to place her characters and her readers at the center of an essential human dilemma: Will we turn a blind eye to evil in our midst, or will we take some action against it, even if it consists of just one small thing? As Keegan’s concise, capacious new book demonstrates, little acts can lead to real change.”—Los Angeles Times

“Keegan’s precisely considered details about character, setting, memory, and dramatic moment create a story you will want to read again and again. Her deceptively simple language is pitch-perfect.”—Boston Globe

“This exquisite miniature of a novel somehow defies the gravitational pull of its grim subject to hover in a quotidian, luminous present. Details materialize with preternatural clarity. The milky light of a winter afternoon, mist on a river, a woman opening an oven door, a child taking her father’s hand: We see these things and feel their lingering presence as we are drawn into the life of an unassuming man in an unremarkable place.”—The Wall Street Journal

“Claire Keegan…now gives us her best work yet. Small Things Like These is a short, wrenching, thoroughly brilliant novel mapping the path of one man's conscience, its torment and vacillation between two courses of action. Either one bears a price…Spare and potent, this is a remarkable story.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“A sparse, breathtaking perfect gem of a novel.”—People

“Small Things Like These is a gem of a slim novel about a family man faced with a moral decision… a deeply moving tale.”—Associated Press

“Keegan captured and affected my whole attention. She draws a web of complicity around the convent’s activities that is chillingly mundane and brutally true. These kinds of places existed not just because of the cruelty of the people who ran them, but also because of the fear and selfishness of those who were willing to ignore them. Stunning. Just stunning.”—Catherine Whelan, NPR  

“The novel isn’t just an eloquent attack on [Magdalene] laundries, however. It is also a touching Christmas tale, genuinely reminiscent of the festive stories of O Henry and Charles Dickens; a novel that has been seeped in sherry and served by the fireside…As soon as you pick the novel up, it’s all over. The monumental power of Claire Keegan is that she can create these cuckoo-clock narratives where every single word seems to be a necessary contribution to the overall mechanism of the novel. She is all killer, no filler. …How lucky we are to have Keegan, a genuine once-in-a-generation writer whose dedication to her craft is as meticulous as it is masterly.”—The Times (UK) “Keegan distils the years of suffering and torture that went on across the country into a reed-slim moral tale of quiet but monumental devastation…Although concretely realist, and grounded in dark social history, everything about this remarkable novella feels in some way miraculous; from the parable-like impression of the story itself, which culminates in an act of bravery and true Christian humanity, to the modest, measured beauty of Keegan’s prose…The clarity and truth of Keegan’s vision never falters. The result is a truly exquisite, tenderly hopeful Christmas tale in which compassion and altruism triumph over apathy and inertia.”—The Telegraph (UK)  “A feat of compression, concerned with the nature of goodness and the texture of everyday life. [A] snowglobe of a story that fits a whole bustling, striving, yearning world into 114 finely wrought pages.”—The Sunday Times (UK)  “Keegan is the goddess of small things. Her ability to conjure whole worlds from a few words; an entire relationship from a handful of exchanges, is little short of miraculous. Small Things Like These assures us we are all capable of doing the right thing, and that goodness, like misery, can be handed on from man to man. It is a literary state of grace.”—The Herald (UK)  “A masterclass in light-touch, heart-stopping writing…Small Things Like These is gripping and subtly emotionally charged from start to finish. Breathtaking.”—The Sunday Independent (Ireland)

 “With Small Things Like These, Keegan powerfully conjures up a prison, as observed from the perspective of one on the outside looking in. A powerful, haunting drama, this novella is essential reading in 2021.”—The Sunday Business Post (Ireland)  “This distinctly unfestive Christmas tale confirms Keegan’s reputation as an exquisite literary miniaturist who makes a little go a long way.”—The Daily Mail (UK)

“This isn’t a sentimental book. It’s a quiet one, in the wake of John McGahern or Colm Tóibín, populated by the awareness that ‘if you want to get on in life, there’s some things you have to ignore, so you can keep on’. Keegan keeps the mood tight with a nice balance of internal reflection and external action, never going too far in either direction… Furlong [is] one of the subtlest but most memorable of recent characters in fiction.” — The Critic

“An Irishman uncovers abuse at a Magdalen laundry in this compact and gripping novel….Keegan, a prizewinning Irish short story writer, says a great deal in very few words to extraordinary effect in this short novel. Despite the brevity of the text, Furlong’s emotional state is fully rendered and deeply affecting. Keegan also carefully crafts a web of complicity around the convent’s activities that is believably mundane and all the more chilling for it…A stunning feat of storytelling and moral clarity.”—Kirkus Reviews **(starred review)

“The latest from multi-award-winning Irish novelist Keegan (Antarctica) indicts the social culture that enabled Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries and brilliantly articulates a decent person’s struggle of conscience… Keegan’s beautiful prose is quiet and precise, jewel-like in its clarity. Highly recommended.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“Keegan's psychologically astute characterizations subtly convey the dual pressures of culpability and fear felt by the faithful… A trenchant and plangent work asking at what cost does one remain silent.”—Booklist

“This novel, which has all the trappings of a Claire Keegan story (small-town Ireland, a dark secret, a man with a burden to bear) is sure to be absolutely beloved by all who read it.”—**…