Tag: Catholic Church

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

- Lynn Leave a comment

At 118 pages, Small Things Like These  by Claire Keegan, is a quick but powerful read. The book jacket and the beginning of the book lull the reader into the expectation that this will be a comforting Christmas story. The fact that it’s set in the eighties – with all the attendant nostalgic, pre-internet, village shops and village life – reinforces that feeling. However, those expectations are upended when Bill Furlong, during his coal deliveries, encounters girls who live at the local convent. These encounters are so unsettling that they cause him to doubt his previously unquestioned faith in the Church.

The second part of the book deals with Bill’s crisis of conscience. He struggles with his faith and with identifying the right course of action. He feels disconnected from his family and struggles with how his responsibilities to his wife and his family affect doing what he feels is right.

This is a brief but immersive look into a period of Irish life that had resonance for decades afterwards. Seen through Bill’s innocent eyes, one can begin to understand how hard it was for entrenched ideas to shift.

 

With Our Blessing by Jo Spain

- Lynn Leave a comment

 With Our Blessing by Jo Spain is one of those books that provide a bonus – an insight into a piece of history that may have been completely unknown to a reader. Such was the case with this book –  for me. (I’d never before heard of the Magdalene laundries).  For more than a hundred years, these laundries were operated for profit by the church with the help of the Irish government.  Locals and families were often unaware that the girls, predominantly unmarried mothers, were in fact free labor, more or less imprisoned in sometimes very harsh conditions.

That’s the premise for this mystery. A team of Dublin police (or garda, as they’re known in Ireland) is sent to a Limerick convent and former laundry after a local murder is linked to the site. Detective Laura Brennan’s aunt was sent to the convent in the seventies, which personalizes for Brennan the abuse these girls endured. Brennan discovers that her aunt was victimized by the town’s most prominent family and then by the laundry operators. The secrecy that allowed this abuse to go on until the 1990’s stymies the current murder investigations, as well.

This is the first in the Inspector Tom Reynolds series, which features members of the Dublin Murder Squad. Reynolds is the unassuming cool head of the team; Brennan, and other detectives provide a mix of temperaments, skills and backstories that add yet another layer to the already multilayered novel.