Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

In her first collection, Antarctica, “Clouds smashed into each other in the sky”, anticipating the terrible encounter between a married protagonist and the stranger who will leave her tied to a bed. And this landscape tells us things the characters cannot or do not know about the stories they inhabit. In her stories, there are the wide sky, the flowing river and the sea – we are often in County Wexford or County Wicklow in south-east Ireland, where Keegan grew up on a farm, the youngest of six children.

In The Ginger Rogers Sermon, from her first, Antarctica (1999), the protagonist describes the trivial secrets they all keep from one another: “That’s the way it is in our house, everybody knowing things but pretending they don’t.” If you started, you would say the wrong things and you wouldn’t want it to end that way,” we learn of the protagonist in The Parting Gift, from Keegan’s second collection, Walk the Blue Fields (2007). Within these families there is cruelty and violence, as well as deep springs of affection. Instead, the narrative gains its emotional resonance from the dynamics between characters. But this figure never stands very far out in front. The protagonist changes – the father, the mother, a son or daughter. While Dickens uses his story to challenge the unequal distribution of wealth in Victorian society, his message nevertheless reinforces patriarchal values by celebrating the male-centric and materialist aspects of Christmas, rather than its spiritual elements.I n all Claire Keegan’s stories, there is a family. Small Things Like These can be read as a feminist revision of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol - to which the novel explicitly alludes. While the vise-like rhythm of daily life threatens to suffocate his spirit, it also hints at the deep loss he would suffer if stability is renounced. The heartwarming tableau of his wife and daughters making mince pies for Christmas nevertheless makes Bill wonder if the daily grind of providing for his family is all there is to life.

Like the Catholic parish that presides as a monolith over the town of New Ross in 1985 Ireland, Bill's social background reflects both salvation and oppression.Īs a perpetual outsider, Bill senses danger in rituals that others take for granted, and aches for his youngest daughter when she becomes frightened by a 'big, fat Santa,' like the Pied Piper luring a horde of children toward a cave of shiny presents during the town's holiday parade.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan