Hadlow Down Book Club Review – December.

We have been reading ‘Small Things Like These’ by Claire Keegan (2021), a novella shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize. It is set in a small Irish town in the run-up to Christmas 1985, and is about the moral dilemma of Bill Furlong, a coal merchant. He is married with five daughters who are doing well and give him much joy and pride. He is the illegitimate son of a 16 year- old housemaid who was protected by her well-to-do Protestant employer who also acted as a patron to Bill. He is aware of his good fortune and tries to emulate her kindness to him by acts of kindness to others. Continue reading “Hadlow Down Book Club Review – December.”