Small Things Like These

An exquisite winter tale of courage - and its cost, set in Catholic Ireland.

It is 1985, in an Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces into his busiest season. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him - and encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Church.

The long-awaited new work from the author of Foster, Small Things Like These is an unforgettable story of hope, quiet heroism and tenderness. 

Review

A genuine one-in-a-generation writer. ― The Times

[A] snowglobe of a story that fits a whole bustling, striving, yearning world into 114 finely wrought pages. ― Sunday Times

Powerful and affecting and very timely . . . deeply moving. -- Hilary Mantel

Truly great . . . quietly radical -- Ali Smith ― Guardian

Stunning . . . A haunting, hopeful masterpiece. -- Sinéad Gleeson

Remarkable . . . Truly exquisite. ― Daily Telegraph

A restrained and intensely moral book, full of hope and love. ― Observer

Marvellous - exact and icy and loving all at once. -- Sarah Moss

A classic in the making. ― Guardian

About the Author

Claire Keegan's stories are translated into more than thirty-five languages. Antarctica won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Walk the Blue Fields won the Edge Hill Prize for the finest collection of stories published in the British Isles. Foster won the Davy Byrnes Award and in 2020 was chosen by The Times as one of the top fifty works of fiction to be published in the twenty-first century. Small Things Like Thesewas shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Rathbones Folio Prize, awarded for the best work of literature, regardless of form, to be published in the English language. It won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award, the Ambassadors' Prize and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.