In Small Things Like These, however, as in Foster, Keegan fully exploits the power of understatement.

This creates an occasional narrative uneasiness, because her downbeat, deadpan style isn’t well suited to extremity. 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. In her two collections there isn’t one weak story, yet some rely on moments of high drama for their effect. Detailed, insightful and written with striking economy of language, it gets. Small Things Like These can be read as a feminist revision of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol - to which the novel explicitly alludes. It is an emotionally quiet but powerful tale that uses brevity to draw us in and give us access to the most feeling part of our empathetic selves. Small Things Like These brings a fresh and sensitive perspective to an awful period in our collective history. 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. Reading like an old fable, Small Things Like These presents the inner workings of a man who stumbles across a situation at his local convent, and how he makes a.

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.

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