DESCRIPTION

The landmark new novel from award-winning author Claire Keegan

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.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CLAIRE KEEGAN was raised on a farm in Ireland. Her stories have won numerous awards and are translated into more than twenty languages. Antarctica won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and was chosen as a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. Walk the Blue Fields won the Edge Hill Prize for the finest collection of stories published in the British Isles. Foster, after winning the Davy Byrnes Award--then the world's richest prize for a story--was recently selected by The Times UK as one of the top 50 novels to be published in the 21st century. Her stories have been published in the New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, and Best American Stories. Keegan is now holding the Briena Staunton Fellowship at Pembroke College, Cambridge.

REVIEWS

"Small Things Like These is a hypnotic and electrifying Irish tale that transcends country, transcends time. Claire Keegan's sentences make my heart pound and my knees buckle and I will always read everything she writes."--Lily King, author of Writers & Lovers

"In Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan creates scenes with astonishing clarity and lucidity. This is the story of what happened in Ireland, told with sympathy and emotional accuracy. From winter skies to the tiniest tick of speech to the baking of a Christmas cake, Claire Keegan makes her moments real--and then she makes them matter."--Colm Tóibín, author of The Magician

"Small Things Like Theseis not just about Ireland, it's about the world, and it asks profound questions about complicity, about the hope and difficulty of change, and the complex nature of restitution... A single one of Keegan's grounded, powerful sentences can contain volumes of social history. Every word is the right word in the right place, and the effect is resonant and deeply moving."--Hilary Mantel, author ofThe Mirror and the Light

"A book that makes you excited to discover everything its author has ever written... Absolutely beautiful."--Douglas Stuart, author ofShuggie Bain

"Marvellous -- exact and icy and loving all at once."--Sarah Moss, author ofGhost Wall