Narrator: What does it take for a good man to break a town’s silent pact with cruelty? Imagine it's 1985 in a small Irish town, weeks before Christmas. The air is cold, work is scarce, and a quiet anxiety hangs over everyone. For Bill Furlong, a local coal merchant, life is a relentless cycle of work and worry, driven by a deep love for his wife and five daughters. But a routine delivery to the local convent, an institution shrouded in whispers and run by the powerful Catholic Church, forces him to witness a hidden suffering he cannot ignore. This confrontation between his conscience and the community's willful blindness is the heart of Claire Keegan's powerful novella, Small Things Like These. The book masterfully explores how one man's quiet courage can challenge a society built on complicit silence.

Narrator: The character of Bill Furlong is forged by the circumstances of his birth and the kindness of a stranger. Born in 1946 to a sixteen-year-old domestic servant, Furlong's life could have been one of shame and destitution. His mother's own family disowned her. But her employer, a compassionate Protestant widow named Mrs. Wilson, chose kindness over judgment. She allowed Furlong's mother to keep her job and raised the boy in her home as if he were her own. This upbringing provides Furlong with stability but also leaves him with a profound sense of otherness. He is taunted at school for his illegitimate birth, and the space for his father's name on his birth certificate is marked simply "Unknown."

This history instills in Furlong a relentless work ethic and a deep-seated anxiety about providing for his own family. He is acutely aware of the precariousness of life, a feeling amplified by the harsh economic realities of 1980s Ireland, where dole queues are lengthening and businesses are closing. He constantly questions the meaning of his unending toil, wondering if there is more to life than the "mechanics of the days." His past, marked by both the stigma of his birth and the grace of Mrs. Wilson's compassion, creates a man who is both deeply responsible and quietly searching for a moral compass beyond mere survival.

Narrator: The Good Shepherd convent sits on a hill overlooking the town of New Ross, its pristine lawns and respectable facade presenting an image of order and charity. It runs a successful laundry business, known for its quality work. But beneath this public image, dark rumors persist. Townspeople whisper that the "training school" is actually a place of penance for "girls of low character," forced into unpaid labor from dawn until night. Some even suggest it's a mother-and-baby home, where infants are secretly adopted out for profit.

Furlong is forced to confront these rumors when an early delivery takes him into the convent's private spaces. There, he discovers a group of shoeless young women polishing the chapel floor, their faces etched with exhaustion. One girl, with a Dublin accent, desperately begs him for help to escape, even asking him to help her drown herself in the river. The encounter leaves Furlong deeply shaken. When he shares his horror with his wife, Eileen, her reaction embodies the town's collective denial. She insists "such things had nothing to do with them" and that "if you want to get on in life, there’s things you have to ignore." Her argument is one of pure self-preservation: the nuns are reliable customers, and thinking too much only brings you down. When Furlong asks what she would do if it were one of their own daughters, her reply is swift and final: "'Tis not one of ours." This exchange reveals the chilling logic of societal complicity, where economic stability and personal comfort are prioritized over confronting an uncomfortable and inconvenient truth.

Narrator: Furlong's discovery at the convent ignites a profound internal conflict. The image of the desperate girl, the sight of padlocked doors, and the broken glass atop the convent walls haunt him. His wife's pragmatic dismissal only isolates him further, leaving him to grapple with his conscience alone. The weight of his inaction torments him. He replays the moment he took the nuns' money and left the girl behind, feeling like a hypocrite for attending Mass afterward.

This moral crisis is intensified by a warning from a local woman, Mrs. Kehoe. She cautions him about the far-reaching power of the Church, explaining that the convent and the girls' school his daughters attend are intertwined. "You can't side against one without damaging your chances with the other," she warns. Her words lay bare the immense pressure to conform. To challenge the convent is not just a moral act; it's a direct threat to his family's future and his social standing. Furlong is trapped at a crossroads. He can follow his wife's advice and the town's unspoken rule to look the other way, ensuring his family's security. Or, he can listen to the growing voice of his conscience, an act that risks everything he has worked so hard to build. This dilemma forces him to question the very definition of a good life.

Narrator: On Christmas Eve, as the town is lost in festive preparations, Furlong's internal turmoil reaches its peak. He reflects on the kindness of Mrs. Wilson and the quiet decency of Ned, the farmhand who was a father figure to him. He realizes that his own mother could have easily shared the fate of the girls in the laundry. This thought becomes unbearable. He asks himself a defining question: "Was it possible to carry on... through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian?"

In a moment of profound moral clarity, he makes a decision. He drives back to the convent, finds the girl, Sarah, shivering in the coal shed, and simply leads her out. As he walks her through the snowy town towards his own home, he faces the immediate judgment of his community. Neighbors stare, whisper, and give them a wide berth. Furlong knows he will "pay for it." He anticipates the trouble that awaits him at home with Eileen and the potential ruin of his business. Yet, despite this, he feels an "un-recognisable joy." He realizes that the worst thing that could have happened was not the consequences of his action, but the lifelong regret of inaction—"the thing not done." In this single, courageous act of compassion, Furlong transcends his anxieties and finds a sense of purpose and happiness more profound than any he has ever known.

Narrator: The fictional story of Bill Furlong is a gateway to a devastating chapter of real Irish history. A note at the end of the book provides the stark context: for over a century, institutions known as Magdalen Laundries, run by the Catholic Church in concert with the Irish State, incarcerated thousands of women and girls. The last one did not close until 1996. These were not schools but prisons, where "fallen women"—a group that included unmarried mothers, victims of abuse, and those simply deemed troublesome—were forced into unpaid, grueling labor.

The true number of victims is unknown because most records were deliberately destroyed or lost, but estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000. In related Mother and Baby Homes, the scale of tragedy was equally horrific. A 2021 commission report found that 9,000 children died in just eighteen of these institutions. The discovery by historian Catherine Corless that 796 babies died at the Tuam home between 1925 and 1961, their bodies buried in a septic tank, shocked the world. For decades, this systemic abuse was an open secret, sustained by a culture of shame, fear, and institutional power. The Irish government did not issue a formal apology for its role in the Magdalen Laundries until 2013. This historical reality transforms Furlong's story from a personal moral drama into a powerful indictment of a nation's collective failure.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Small Things Like These is that true morality is not found in conforming to societal expectations or religious dogma, but in the courageous, individual choice to act with compassion in the face of indifference. Bill Furlong's journey shows that the heaviest burden is not the trouble we invite by doing the right thing, but the silent, corrosive guilt of the thing not done.

The book leaves us with a quiet but profound challenge. It asks us to look at the walls we build in our own communities, the uncomfortable truths we choose to ignore for the sake of convenience. Furlong’s story is a testament to the fact that history is not only shaped by grand events, but by the accumulation of small, seemingly insignificant acts of courage or cowardice. It forces us to ask: when faced with a moment of truth, will we choose to walk away, or will we have the courage to do a small thing, like these?