{"id":30043,"date":"2026-02-08T11:59:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T10:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=30043"},"modified":"2026-02-08T11:59:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T10:59:10","slug":"a-review-of-small-things-like-these-by-claire-keegan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=30043","title":{"rendered":"A review of &#8220;Small Things Like These&#8221;\u00a0by Claire Keegan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Set in a small Irish town in 1985, the point of view is that of kindly coal merchant, Bill Furlong. As the story develops, it becomes the author&#8217;s response to the scandal of the Magdalen laundries. Claire Keegan&#8217;s writing is so exquisite that one needs to read it slowly and fortunately one can because the book is little more than 100 pages. Furlong knew&nbsp;<em>&#8220;It would be the easiest thing in the world to lose everything&#8221;<\/em>&nbsp;and asks himself&nbsp;<em>&#8220;was there any point in being alive without helping one another?&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Set in a small Irish town in 1985, the point of view is that of kindly coal merchant, Bill Furlong. As the story develops, it becomes the author&#8217;s response to the scandal of the Magdalen laundries. Claire Keegan&#8217;s writing is so exquisite that one needs to read it slowly and fortunately one can because the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30043"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30044,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30043\/revisions\/30044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}