Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

​   This is a lovely Christmas story. I didn’t know that going in and it made for an odd choice for a broiling June evening, but there it is. A story of Bill Furlong, a coal merchant in Ireland, a good man who does a good deed, right in time for Christmas.
   You sort of have to be familiar with Magdalene sisters. You can read about it or watch a very good movie with that title. It’s a horrifying thing that went on Ireland for much too long and traumatized and/or ended many lives of women and children. Actually the most horrifying thing about it is that despite its heavily medieval nature, it went on until 1996. Eleven years prior to it, Furlong finds himself in a position to help a young girl and his conscience is too loud to say no. And what’s more of a Christmas miracle than kindness of strangers.
    I really enjoyed this book. It was short (a quick one sitting read) and very Irish, it played it my mind with accents and all and had a very pleasing slice of life thing going for it, realism based charm. Plus it had such a likable protagonist in Furlong, a devoted family man who goes through workaday motions in a sort of quiet determination that never lowers itself into desperation no matter how close to it he may hover in all of his contemplation. Furlong is a man who knows how to hope and how to find joy in small things, small things like these. A lesson to be learned there certainly.   
    A lovely read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.