It’s been over a year since I read Small Things Like These, and rarely have I read something to match its experience. I haven’t stopped thinking about this book.

Keegan is a realist, which is refreshing to see in this century. Her works read like the classics, and their minuteness gives the timelessness of classics. Minute, because the events never change the grand scheme, they remain at a personal level. And that’s exactly what makes them so powerful.

Small Things Like These is an epic, if epics dealt with individual instances. Its everyman hero, Bill Furlong, doesn’t get to save everyone from the Magdalene Laundries, but his act of bravery changes the world for one woman. Along the way, he discovers himself as well, and the limitation of the epic to these personal scales creates all the more impact. The characters and their lives feel real, therefore the consequences feel real too.

This is a Christmas book unlike any other, one of not just self-discovery but also the discovery of reality outside one’s own bubble, the discovery of horrific truths that lurk beneath authority. A story of corruption and complicity, Small Things Like These packs a punch.