Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

This is a Christmas time novella, where by a simple story is told in a straight forward way, but a lot simmers underneath the surface. The book opens in New Ross, on the coast of Ireland. The town rises up in all its picturesque antiquity and idyllic holiday celebrations, but with a web of economic and social tensions thrumming beneath the surface. It’s 1985, and New Ross is enduring a grinding decline. Businesses shuttered, the dole lines are long, and the houses cold. Those who can leave have already skipped abroad looking for work, life. The novel's everyman hero is Bill Furlong, whose past and present she sketches with such crisp efficiency that the brush marks of her artistry are almost invisible. Furlong knows he’s fortunate. Though born here into poverty and orphaned early, he became the ward of a wealthy widow who set him up with a little money. Here there is a reference to the Magdalene laundries, which were run for more than 200 years by religious orders, subjected thousands of young women to forced labor, physical abuse, baby kidnapping and even early death. Billy is now married with five daughters, and he sells coal and timber around town. But he is not altogether happy and there are several things alluded to that this uneasiness might stem from, and goes on to show us why. From the elements of a simple existence in an inconsequential town, the author has carved out a profoundly moving and universal story. There’s nothing preachy here, just the strange joy and anxiety of firmly resisting cruelty.