It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.
Already an international bestseller, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers.
It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.
Already an international bestseller, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers.
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Find Small Things Like These Claire Keegan in PDF, EPUB, ebook, audiobook, print, or library editions.
Find Small Things Like These Claire Keegan in PDF, EPUB, ebook, audiobook, print, or library editions.
2 books in catalog
Short fiction and novellas marked by precision and emotional depth have established a vital presence in modern Irish prose. Claire Keegan is an Irish author whose short fiction and novellas include the Booker Prize-shortlisted Small Things Like These and the Davy Byrnes Award-winning Foster. Translated into over thirty-five languages, her writings have garnered international recognition for their focused narrative craftsmanship.
Born in 1968 and raised on a farm on the Wicklow and Wexford border in Ireland, Keegan traveled to New Orleans at age seventeen to study English and Political Science at Loyola University. She returned to Ireland in 1992 and subsequently earned an MA at the University of Wales and an M.Phil at Trinity College, Dublin. Keegan made her literary debut in 1999 with the short story collection Antarctica, which won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and was named a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. She followed this with her 2007 story collection, Walk the Blue Fields, which won the Edge Hill Prize. In 2010, she published the novella Foster, which won the Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award. Her 2021 novella Small Things Like These was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Rathbones Folio Prize, while winning the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award. In 2023, she published So Late in the Day. Two of her works have been adapted into feature films.
Keegan is noted for her disciplined economy of prose, producing high narrative density across a compact bibliography. Her writing relies on careful observation, cadence, and what remains unsaid between characters, inviting the reader to complete the quiet spaces in each story. Her work frequently explores rural Irish life, family dynamics, misogyny, emotional isolation, and subtle moral courage. By combining precise dialogue with tightly structured scenes, her fiction delivers profound psychological resonance without unnecessary elaboration.
2 books in catalog
Short fiction and novellas marked by precision and emotional depth have established a vital presence in modern Irish prose. Claire Keegan is an Irish author whose short fiction and novellas include the Booker Prize-shortlisted Small Things Like These and the Davy Byrnes Award-winning Foster. Translated into over thirty-five languages, her writings have garnered international recognition for their focused narrative craftsmanship.
Born in 1968 and raised on a farm on the Wicklow and Wexford border in Ireland, Keegan traveled to New Orleans at age seventeen to study English and Political Science at Loyola University. She returned to Ireland in 1992 and subsequently earned an MA at the University of Wales and an M.Phil at Trinity College, Dublin. Keegan made her literary debut in 1999 with the short story collection Antarctica, which won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and was named a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. She followed this with her 2007 story collection, Walk the Blue Fields, which won the Edge Hill Prize. In 2010, she published the novella Foster, which won the Davy Byrnes Irish Writing Award. Her 2021 novella Small Things Like These was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Rathbones Folio Prize, while winning the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award. In 2023, she published So Late in the Day. Two of her works have been adapted into feature films.
Keegan is noted for her disciplined economy of prose, producing high narrative density across a compact bibliography. Her writing relies on careful observation, cadence, and what remains unsaid between characters, inviting the reader to complete the quiet spaces in each story. Her work frequently explores rural Irish life, family dynamics, misogyny, emotional isolation, and subtle moral courage. By combining precise dialogue with tightly structured scenes, her fiction delivers profound psychological resonance without unnecessary elaboration.
