Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These has been shortlisted as one of six novels for the Booker Prize 2022. The winner will be announced on Monday, October 17th.
Set in a small Irish town in 1985, the novel tells the story of family man and coal merchant Bill Furlong, during the weeks leading up to Christmas as he faces into his busiest season. While delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.
The prize’s judges say “Keegan is measured and merciless as she dissects the silent acquiescence of a 1980s Irish town in the church’s cruel treatment of unmarried mothers – and the cost of one man’s moral courage.”
This year’s Booker Prize selection was made from 169 novels published between 1st October 2021 and 30th September 2022 and submitted to the prize by publishers. The initial longlist of 13 writers of fiction was announced 26th July and the winner will be announced on 17th October.
Keegan’s novel, published by Faber, is shortlisted alongside NoViolet Bulawayo for Glory, Percival Everett for The Trees, Alan Garner for Treacle Walker, Shehan Karunatilaka for The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, and Elizabeth Strout for Oh William! Small Things Like These is the shortest book recognised in the prize’s history, at 116 pages.
From Wicklow originally, Claire Keegan’s first collection of stories, Antarctica, was a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. Her second, Walk the Blue Fields, was published May, 2007. It was Richard Ford’s book of the year. Keegan’s acclaimed ‘long, short story’ Foster won the 2009 Davy Byrnes Short Story Award 2009. Foster appeared in the February 15, 2010 issue of the New Yorker and was listed in that publication’s “Best of the Year” list.
Her stories have won several awards including The Hugh Leonard Bursary, The Macaulay Fellowship, The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, Davy Bynre’s Irish Writing Award, The Martin Healy Prize, The Olive Cook Award, The Kilkenny Prize, The Tom Gallon Award and The William Trevor Prize, judged by William Trevor. Twice was Keegan the recipient of the Francis MacManus Award.