"Small Things Like These" by Claire Keegan

On the one hand, there's nothing altogether shocking about Small Things Like These, which revolves around an Irishman's realization that the convent near his home is abusing young women. Revelations like these about the Magdalene laundries and other abuses perpetrated by the Catholic Church have made the news and been turned into a number of recent movies and books. The increasing visibility of such stories don't reduce their horrors at all, but it does mean a new book on the topic needs to do more than just reveal the atrocities.

Fortunately, Keegan's Small Things Like These does just that, spending little time on describing the abuse--most of it is assumed, unsaid--and instead focusing on her protagonist, Bill Furlong. Bill is a good man; he's a loving father and husband, a respected boss, and a reliable citizen. The only "stain" on his character is his parentage: his mother gave birth young, out of wedlock, and Bill never learned who the father was. Still, he was protected from the worst treatment as a child of an unwed mother because of his mother's employer, who protected and cared for her and Bill.

Bill is a good man, but like most people, his day-to-day is consumed by the mundane of tasks to be done. He tries to find time to think and make sense of the world around him, but the pace of daily life is relentless. When he is forced to confront the convent's abuse directly, he does as most do and falls into politeness and easy escapes.

Bill, his wife, and his daughters are comfortable, but they're not secure. They can buy small indulgences for Christmas, but Bill knows a blown car engine will mean putting off new house windows for several more years. That precariousness--the sense that any good in life can be undone in a moment--shapes most of Bill's thoughts. 

Nevertheless, in the end, Bill makes the "right" choice and rescues one of the girls. Though he repeatedly acknowledges that this isn't an easy victory, as there will be repercussions for his actions, I still was initially disappointed with Keegan's book. After all, she chose to finish on a high note with Bill's heroism, which felt like it overshadowed the enormous coda that there is no pat happy ending.

But then I thought about it a little more. Keegan's Small Things Like These isn't a novel, or really even a novella. It's a short story, which I say not to criticize the publisher's decision to print as a standalone book, but rather to note that its success relies on the short story form. In short stories, nothing is resolved, as they're typically only a snapshot of a character, a setting, a dilemma. It's a moment in time when a decision is made. To that end, Keegan's made a moving portrait of a man trying to do good, not just out of sympathy for his mother (though that plays a role), but because he recognizes the importance of "daily kindnesses" and the value of allowing "the best bit" of oneself to "shin[e] forth, and surfac[e]."

(as an additional note, though any group of stories doesn't tell all stories, it's increasingly hard to believe the Catholic Church has done any good in the world)

"Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay" by Elena Ferrante

I hadn't realized that I read My Brilliant Friend, the first in the Neapolitan quartet, over two years ago. I recently recommended Lying Life of Adults to a friend, and when she liked it, she started the quartet--which of course got me going on the series again. So now I've finished the third book, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, which follows Elena and Lila as they navigate adulthood as wives and mothers while also pursuing careers.

In rereading my initial review, I'm struck by how closely Ferrante has maintained her central themes without producing books that feel repetitive and reductive. Across all three books, the central characteristics are the same: Lila is brilliant; Elena, despite more outward success than Lila, feels forever in Lila's shadow. Both women are still tied to the claustrophobic neighborhood of their childhood--Lila literally, and Elena by her inability to escape the town's ongoing drama and tension, even when she moves away.

What dominates this novel more than the earlier ones is the political tension broiling over class conflict and even a burgeoning feminist movement. Those tensions have always existed, but now that Elena and Lila are older, they find themselves more directly involved: Lila by working at an abusive factory and Elena by reporting on the abuse. These tensions are especially ambiguous for Elena, whose education, success as an author, and marriage into a well-off family seem to rise her above her station. Yet she feels continuously reminded of the poverty of her childhood, and no amount of success allows her to shake the imposter syndrome she's internalized. She never feels confident unless praised by those she assumes are superior, and even then, she views any "brilliance" she reveals as more that of a trained parrot--repeating the "right" phrases through careful study--than any intelligence of her own.

Yet Elena is smarter than she gives herself credit for, especially as she considers her relationship with her husband, Pietro. He appears a "modern" man--one who refuses to get married in a church and praises Elena's education--yet he quickly shows himself as small-minded as any chauvinist of his day. After all, you don't have to hit women to insist they take on a inferior role.

But I think what makes these novels work is that, among all the political considerations, Elena (and Lila too) are also consumed by the pettiest of jealousies and slights. They're brilliant and they're also incredibly human: selfish, judgmental, stubborn. These traits are especially evident in Elena's feelings for Nino, whom she's been infatuated with since childhood. Nino's torrid affair with Lila consumed most of book two, but in book three it's Elena who ends up with her childhood crush. There ought to be some celebration when Elena and Nino get together, but it's clear he's a complete cad--even Elena knows it but can't help herself. We know Elena is ruining her life when she runs away from her husband and children (echoes of one of Ferrante's other books, The Lost Daughter), but it's clear her life before wasn't good either. And perhaps can never be. Ferrante's created a character who can never be satisfied--partially because of her own personality and partially because she's been set up, since birth, to feel that way.

Book one begins with Lila's disappearance, at the age of sixty. I'm eager to get to that moment in book four--to see where Elena ends up after she and Nino (inevitably) dissolve; to see if Elena and Lila can have the real conversation Elena wants; and to see if Elena can shake off the drowning whirlpool of Naples once and for all.

P.S. Get this series a better cover!

"I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home" by Lorrie Moore

I'm feeling rusty. Not a good start for a book that I liked but is sort of hard to define. It's far easier to complain and criticize.

I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home is a book made of two disparate, and drastically unequal, parts. The majority of the book concerns Finn and his relationships with two people: his brother Max, who is dying in hospice; and his former-girlfriend Lily, who has died by suicide... but is now joining Finn on a road trip. The second story is in epistolary form from a late-19th-century hotel owner to her deceased sister. As the New York Times review put it, the novel "braids a historical ghost story with a zombie romance."

Okay. So not surprisingly the book is about grief and loss and all the undefinable messiness that comes with it. The epistolary story is a bit mysterious and then jauntily shocking. The Finn romance is more complicated. I loved the early part of the story with Finn talking at Max's bedside. Moore captures the absurdity of the situation and the brothers' attempts to form meaning and maintain levity at the same time. However, halfway through the story, we shift to the zombie-romance road trip with Finn and the decaying-but-animated body of Lily. Here's where it gets trickier. The emphasis on Finn's conflicting feelings about Lily makes sense--how can you understand a relationship where one person wanted to end her life? What does that mean about her feelings about you? Your feelings for her? All fertile ground, but it's mixed into near-constant descriptions of Lily's decomposing body. Which, sure, emphasizes that Finn isn't talking to a real person, but rather a palimpsest of his ex-girlfriend, but it's still a lot. And I really don't want to read about someone having sex with a zombie. 

Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book. Moore has a fantastic way with sentences--they hum with humor and meaning. There's a joke in almost every sentence, yet it doesn't feel overdone or hackneyed. It's the kind of book where you could do a deep-dive into just a single paragraph. Also the kind of book worth re-reading.