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Museum Community Engagement Manager Brigid Miller recommends Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan.
In just 114 pages, Claire Keegan paints a vivid picture of everyday life amidst a dark period of Ireland’s history.
Small Things Like These is a story about the struggle between an institution in control and the choice between complicity and courage.
It’s 1985 and the Catholic Church runs the small Irish town in which Bill Furlong and his family live. One day, while delivering coal to the local convent, Bill encounters a woman scrubbing the floor asking him to take her away. Later, on another delivery, he finds a teenage woman locked in a shed and asking for her fourteen-week-old son.
Knowing the gossip around the village of a “laundry” at the convent, Bill finds himself caught between his own past and the future he wants for his five daughters.
The rumors that Bill hears are about Magdalene Laundries. From the 18th to the late 20th Century, the Catholic Church ran Magdalene Laundries across Ireland, while the exact number is unknown, upwards of 30,000 women and girls were incarcerated and forced to labor in this system...
Read Brigid's entire review here.
Find more staff book recommendations here.
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