Editor’s note: This segment was rebroadcast on July 25, 2025. Find that audio here.
Acclaimed author Claire Keegan’s 2021 novella “Small Things Like These” was recently selected for Oprah Winfrey’s book club and has been made into a film starring Oscar-winning actor Cillian Murphy.
“ Small Things Like These” centers on Bill Furlong, an Irish coal merchant who, just before Christmas, discovers a woman who’s being exploited at a local convent.
The story takes inspiration from — and is dedicated to — the women and children of the real-life Magdalen Laundries, a program run by the Catholic Church where so-called fallen women were forced into unpaid labor.
“I do think that people probably are inclined towards my works because they’re not long-winded,” Keegan says. “And they do seem to move people emotionally.”
8 questions with Claire Keegan
The Magdalen laundries have been a big story in Ireland and in the United States. They operated for hundreds of years, enslaved tens of thousands of women and were actually operating in some form until the nineteen nineties. Did you know anyone who was involved in them?
“No, I don’t. But for me, it isn’t a book about the laundries. For me, it’s a book about a coal man who doesn’t know who his father is because his mother [gave birth to him] out of wedlock. And I think it’s more to do with hope and courage … I didn’t want to write a story of cruelty and incarceration.”
You mentioned hope and courage. Let’s talk a little bit about that, because even though these laundries were operating when Bill Furlong discovers them, it’s not as if they were a big secret. The community knew what was happening. Was the idea of the struggle to confront injustice what drew you to this story?
“Yes, to some extent. I was really interested in why people did [know] and said nothing. And I do like to think the book answers that because people were terrified, and the church had such a stronghold. The church ran the schools, the hospitals, they hired and fired the teachers. There were a lot of books banned and contraception was illegal until 1985 in Ireland and marital rape was legal until 1990”
In a lot of ways, this is a story about misogyny, and women’s struggle and power. Why did you decide to make a man the protagonist of what feels like a women-centered story?
“Because he has agency. Because he can do something. It would be far more unlikely, I would imagine, for his wife, who already has five children to care for, and a husband and herself to feed. It was just interesting to test what he would do with his freedom.”
You end the story without the reader really knowing the consequences of what Bill decides to do after his discovery. Why did you think it was important to end the story like that?
“Because it suits my taste aesthetically as a reader. I’m trying to write a book I’d like to read. And the place I would like that story to stop is where I ended it because I think I’ve said enough. And for me, elegance is saying just enough.”
I watched an interview where you said stories are reluctantly told. When do you decide that a story is one that you’re going to coax into writing?
“I think the story doesn’t leave me alone. If you ever had a dog and you’re just lazy because it’s a really wet day and the dog keeps nudging you to go out for the walk, you ignore him to a certain point and then after a while it’s just so much easier to go out in the rain because you can’t bear the dog nudging you anymore … it’s a bit like that for me. The stories come and say, ‘Please write me. Will you write me?’ And then in the end they, they win.”
Your writing’s been described as quite precise, and your books are novellas rather than full-length novels. Why do you think this is the form that suits you best?
“Well, I think my first love is poetry, but I’m not drawn to writing poetry. Because I’m drawn to paragraphs. I’m not even that interested in sentences. I’m just always trying to turn sentences into paragraphs, because sentences are gregarious. They actually love the company of other sentences, and most sentences really want to turn into a paragraph, that really interests me … The big difference between the short story and the novel is the level of intensity. A short story just couldn’t go on at that level of intensity for too long, three or four hundred pages, it couldn’t possibly be sustained. So, I’m attracted to the short story and the short forms. Having said that, I like to believe that if I do get a really long story, which needs three or four hundred pages, that’s what I’ll write.”
How do you describe your writing process?
“I start at the beginning. And I keep starting at the beginning every day and printing out what I have from the day before and going over it and trying to add a page or improve a page.
“And I just keep doing that every day until it’s over. I usually write in the mornings. I usually do about 30 drafts. And that’s it. I really haven’t ever plotted anything. I don’t know anything at all about what’s coming along or what I’ll find or discover. I have no agenda. I don’t go in there trying to prove something or lock horns with any type of a theme.
“You know, I’m interested in writing tension … As a reader, I’m really interested in tension … We call it different things. We call it a page-turning quality, or we call it grip. There are several different names for it, but it is tension. And tension is linked to loss. And most stories are about somebody who has lost something, or is losing something, or is looking for something they’ve lost. And that’s what narrative fiction feeds on, it feeds on loss.”
What’s next for you?
“I’m going to write a book set on the farm where I was raised … on a farm in a place called County Wicklow. And I’m going to just use that as the bowl, if you like, to put my next book in. And I think it’s going to be a novel. Something is drawing me back to the farm where I was raised. So, I’m going to give that a go and see what that yields. I’ve no idea what it’s going to be about.”
Emiko Tamagawa produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Todd Mundt. Tamagawa adapted it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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