She connects the violence of the past to that of the present, and domestic violence to state violence. She pulls apart the strands of misogyny in individuals and institutions, diagnosing the same problem in both. Using deft strokes, she builds the Ireland of the early ’80s, superficially modernized but gripped by severe economic distress and a reactionary alliance of church and state, exhibiting the trademark violence of the powerful under threat.Īcross her oeuvre, Keegan illuminates violence better than almost anyone, avoiding easy didacticism. Keegan trusts the reader to interpret the signs: the nuns talking only to the better-off parents, a poor child drinking milk from a cat’s saucer. Full of specificity, it doesn’t stop to explain its small details, from the scraps of Irish language that crop up to its mention of the Texaco Prize or the social protection offered by being a part of the Protestant world. Set in the southeast of Ireland in 1982, the book exhibits an uncompromising verisimilitude. Still, it was not obviously primed for American success. There is hardly a word misspent in its story of conformity and resistance. “Small Things Like These,” which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2022, lays credible claim in less than 150 pages to being the best Irish book of the 21st century.

Book of dead lapalingo