Small Things Like These Book Club Questions: Courage, Silence and Complicity

The question I’d start with is this: When does staying out of someone else’s business become a decision to leave them in danger? In Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These, Bill Furlong has good reasons to keep delivering coal, look after his family and stay on the right side of the people who help his business run. Keegan makes those reasons persuasive enough that a book club can spend an evening arguing over where prudence ends and complicity begins.

These 15 book club questions follow Bill from his first encounters at the convent to the walk home on Christmas Eve. If you only have half an hour, use questions 1, 6, 9, 12 and 15.

Spoiler and content note. The questions discuss the ending, institutional abuse and the separation of mothers and children.

Courage and the people who made it possible

In New Ross, Ireland, in the weeks before Christmas 1985, Bill’s work takes him to the local convent. His encounters there bring back memories of his mother, who gave birth to him while unmarried, and Mrs. Wilson, who gave them a home. That history gives the group something more specific to discuss than whether Bill is a good man.

1. When did you first think Bill owed someone at the convent more than a moment of concern? Pick a scene. What does he know at that point, and what can he reasonably do with what he knows?
2. What does Mrs. Wilson’s treatment of Bill’s mother teach him about what one person can do? Where do the parallels between Mrs. Wilson and Bill hold, and how do their resources and authority differ?
3. What changes when Bill learns that the girl in the coal shed is also named Sarah? How does the shared name affect what he sees in her situation? What might he still miss if he understands her mainly through his mother’s story?
4. How does being a father pull Bill in two directions? Where does caring for his five daughters make him more attentive to Sarah, and where does it make intervention feel riskier?
5. What does Bill’s first encounter with Sarah in the coal shed add to his return on Christmas Eve? Which part of his earlier response would you describe as help, and which part leaves Sarah dependent on another decision of his?

Silence and complicity in New Ross

At the convent, the Mother Superior offers Bill tea, presents him with a Christmas card containing money and steers the conversation toward an innocent explanation for what he found. Later, Mrs. Kehoe warns him about the nuns’ influence. Put those conversations side by side and listen for how much each woman expects Bill to understand without saying it outright.

6. Read the Mother Superior’s conversation with Bill as a negotiation. What does each person want the other to accept? Who gets to explain why Sarah was in the shed? How does the Christmas card change the exchange?
7. How did you read Mrs. Kehoe’s warning? Is she protecting Bill, protecting her own position, passing along a rule everyone understands, or doing some combination of the three? What in the scene supports your reading?
8. What is Eileen trying to protect when she urges caution? Which of her concerns does the novel give you reason to share? Where do you think she and Bill would draw different lines around what they owe Sarah?
9. Who has the most freedom to intervene, and who bears the greatest cost if everyone stays quiet? Compare Bill, Eileen, Mrs. Kehoe and the Mother Superior. What practical power does each have over money, work, reputation or shelter?
10. When Bill and Sarah walk through town together, people see them and some speak to Bill. What do you make of the way they respond to Sarah? Which reaction most clearly shows what the town has learned to overlook?

Sarah, Christmas and the last pages

11. What does Sarah ask about her baby, and how does that change what you want from the ending? What can Bill do for her that evening, and what remains beyond his reach?
12. At the Nativity scene, Sarah brushes snow from the donkey’s ear. Why might Keegan give her that small gesture? What do you notice about Sarah herself in that moment? How does the public Christmas display change the way you read the scene?
13. What do you make of Bill considering the priest and then walking toward his own home with Sarah? What is he assuming about the help the Church could offer, and what responsibility does he take on by choosing his own door?
14. How do you hear Bill’s confidence about what comes next? Does it come across as hope, resolve, a misreading of the trouble ahead, or some mixture? Which detail in the final walk shapes your answer?
15. Which action best earns the title Small Things Like These? Give each person a chance to name one gesture. Then ask how those actions depend on who has the power to make them and who has to live with the consequences.

The history behind the novel

Keegan’s fictional convent draws on the history of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries, where women and girls were confined and made to work. For a group that wants to spend time on the history, Ireland’s 2013 interdepartmental report includes sections on how people entered the laundries and on state involvement in their operation. One question to take back to the book is which forms of power Bill encounters directly and which he can only infer. Read the Irish government’s report on the Magdalene laundries.

A 30-minute book club plan

For more on Keegan’s style and characterization, read our Small Things Like These review. If your group wants to revisit the last scene, see our Small Things Like These ending explainer.

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