If you liked
Books like Small Things Like These
by Claire Keegan
Small Things Like These is Claire Keegan's slim, perfect novel about an Irish coal merchant who notices something wrong at the local convent and has to decide what to do about it. Barely a hundred pages, and it lands like a hammer. If you want more quiet, morally serious fiction that says a lot in a little, read on.
The shortlist
What to read next
Fosterby Claire Keegan
“Foster by Claire Keegan 2010 review. A young Irish girl is sent for a summer to relatives in rural County Wexford. Davy Byrnes Memorial Prize winner.”
Prophet Songby Paul Lynch
“Prophet Song by Paul Lynch 2023 review. A Dublin mother of four watches Ireland slide into an emergency-power dictatorship. Booker Prize 2023 and one of the canonical contemporary dystopian literary novels.”
The Bee Stingby Paul Murray
“The Bee Sting by Paul Murray 2023 review. A four-POV Irish family novel about the slow collapse of one car-dealer family in the post-2008 recession. Booker Prize shortlist 2023.”
Gileadby Marilynne Robinson
“Gilead by Marilynne Robinson 2004 review. A seventy-six-year-old Iowa Congregationalist minister writes a letter to his seven-year-old son. Pulitzer Prize winner.”
The Heart's Invisible Furiesby John Boyne
“The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne 2017 review. Cyril Avery's life across seven decades - adopted out of 1945 Catholic Cork, navigating the closeted gay Ireland of the 1960s through the 2010s. Boyne's literary commercial masterwork.”
Shuggie Bainby Douglas Stuart
“Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart 2020 review. A young boy navigates childhood with his alcoholic mother in 1980s post-industrial Glasgow. Booker Prize winner.”
FAQ
Common questions about Small Things Like These read-alikes
- I want more Claire Keegan.
- Foster is the essential next read, an even shorter story about a girl sent to live with relatives one summer, and it is just as quietly devastating. Keegan does not waste a word, and Foster shows why she is the master of the short form.
- I want more contemporary Irish fiction.
- Prophet Song by Paul Lynch, the Booker winner about Ireland sliding into authoritarianism, and The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, a sprawling tragicomic family novel, are the two big recent Irish books. Both are bleaker and bigger than Keegan, but the moral seriousness carries over.
- I want the same conscience-under-pressure story.
- Gilead by Marilynne Robinson turns on grace and the quiet choice to do right, in an American register. It shares Small Things Like These' belief that a single decent act is worth a whole novel.
- I want an Irish life across the decades.
- The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne and Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (Glasgow, not Ireland, but the same working-class Celtic register) follow hard lives with humor and heartbreak. Bigger canvases than Keegan, same emotional honesty.
The original