Small Things Like These won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and was named The New York Times Top 10 Books of the Year. It has been adapted into a film starring Cillian Murphy, set for release in 2024.
The novella’s final image—Bill leading a shivering girl out the convent gate into the snow—is devastating not because it is heroic, but because it is possible . It asks every reader: When have you walked past a coal shed? Rating: ★★★★★ (A modern classic) small things like these claire keegan pdf
Bill Furlong is the anti-hero of our age. He is not a crusader. He is not angry. He is simply a man who remembers being hungry, who remembers the kindness of a widow who took him in, and who realizes that “the worst of it was that no one would ever know—except himself.” Small Things Like These won the Orwell Prize