Staff Book Review

Meet Christy - Christy is the Library Services Manager at WCPL. She is a professional book nerd who has worked in public libraries for 35 years. She lives in Virginia with a menagerie of family members and fur-grandchildren. When not at work, she can be found reading and writing mysteries, solving puzzles, and watching trash TV.

This month, Christy reviewed "Small Things Like These" by Claire Keegan, a powerful novella set in an Irish town during Christmas. This book inspired a movie with the same title, starring Cillian Murphy.

"Bill Furlong is a good man. Born in poverty, he has worked hard to become a respected member of his village. As a coal merchant, he provides for his family and those in the community that have fallen into hard times. At Christmas, his busiest time of the year, Bill leaves his office to make deliveries alongside his workmen. One morning, he makes a delivery to the Convent that sits on a hill above his village and discovers a shocking secret. When he tells his wife of his discovery, he finds that she is already aware of the problem, and she encourages him to put it out of his mind. Bill is left with an agonizing choice—will he become complicit to a tragic moral crisis, or will he stand against the tide of his family and community and risk everything he has worked so hard to achieve?

In this tiny jewel of a book, Keegan uses spare language to paint an immersive picture of life in a 1985 Irish village. Through the eyes of Bill Furlong, Keegan illuminates a universal truth—that opening one’s eyes to injustice is both a wonderful gift and a terrible responsibility. This timely work will appeal to anyone who enjoys Christmas stories, good literature, and stories that make you think about what kind of person you are and wish to be."