Previous
Situational Irony
Style
Explanation and Analysis:
Keegan wields her prose to achieve an effect that seems both refreshing and devastating. Sentences come in short, declarative clauses—“it was a blustery afternoon in April”—while each character’s share of dialogue often stretches no more than a line. The novella feels sharp and straightforward, refusing to add any emotional or stylistic embellishments to its scenes.
Yet this language becomes the means by which Keegan ends up delivering emotion. The novel finds something desolate in its minimalist simplicity and fills in its empty spaces with the weight of the unspoken. Furlong goes about his daily coal deliveries and chats with his wife about family finances or Christmas pies while his deepest memories remain buried within. Small Things Like These enacts a kind of reverse logic, pointing to all that does not get shared by what little actually does. It hints at significance through silence. In the novel’s clean prose, objects seem to take on new meaning and emotional depth. Jigsaw puzzles are not merely toys along store windows but reminders of deeper childhood sadness, and the brutal Irish cold speaks to the muted feelings of loneliness and grief. The black socks and gray-colored shifts worn by the girls at the convent gesture ominously towards the nun’s abusive labor regime. Small Things Like These offers itself as proof of how less can often mean more.
Related Themes:
