I greatly enjoy reading long, multi-volume, immersive novels: Marcel Proust – bien sür – , Elena Ferrante, and Thomas Mann. I also enjoy novellas, short books of fiction that might occupy around one hundred pages or less: Stefan Zweig – natürlich – , Françoise Sagan, and, again, Thomas Mann. Novellas are not so much immersive as paddling; but, despite their brevity, at their best they clearly signal something important about life. They have one point to make and they make it speedily.
Last year, a good friend gave me two novellas by Claire Keegan, a contemporary Irish writer. Although I read a reasonable amount of Irish fiction, I had not come across her work previously. When I started Small Things Like These (2022), I realised immediately that her writing was of the highest quality, as good as John McGahern (who is very, very good); and that the story she told was both difficult and important. Subsequently, I have read two more of her books, and discovered that they each share the rare quality of great literature, the ability to capture with some precision the complexities and tensions within normal human relationships, and the moral dilemmas that arise in our everyday lives.
Continue reading “Small things”