Book Review: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

[dustandhoney]

I read this one slowly, though it’s short enough to be devoured in a single sitting. Something about it asked for stillness. For quiet afternoons and the hush before snow. Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These is a novella, but it lands like a full season—cold at the edges, warm at the core, and utterly unshowy in its grace.

Set in 1980s Ireland, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, the story follows Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and quiet man, as he moves through routines both ordinary and quietly profound. The language is spare and economical—no flourish wasted—yet what’s left unsaid does as much work as what’s on the page.

The heart of the story lies in a moment of moral decision: a small, human act that resists a much larger, institutional silence. It never shouts. It simply chooses, and bears witness. And that choice echoes.

🌿 Favourite takeaway: “There were so many things that people did not allow themselves to think about, because they feared what thinking might lead to.” The book asks us, gently but unflinchingly, to think anyway.

It’s a cold story, and a kind one. A winter fable with its eyes wide open.

🌙 Four and a quarter stars. I wanted just a little more at the end—one thread tied, one glimpse ahead—but perhaps that’s part of its lasting ache. Quiet, and true.

Would recommend for: winter evenings, those who carry quiet anger, readers of sparse prose and heavy silences.