Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

I've been intending to join into these fun book memes for many years, and I've finally got around to trying these out on Fridays in December. I plan to continue participating in 2023.

Today's Featured Book... 

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Genre: Fiction

Published: November 30, 2021

Page Count: 128 pages

Summary: 

It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church. 

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY is hosted by Rose City Reader. What book are you happy about reading this week? Please share the opening sentence (or so) on BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY! Add the link to your blog or social media post and visit other blogs to see what others are reading.

Happy Friday and welcome to the FIRST LINE FRIDAY, hosted by Reading is My Superpower! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line.

"In October there were yellow trees. Then the clocks went back the hour and the long November winds came in and blew, and stripped the trees bare. In the town of New Ross, chimneys threw out smoke which fell away and drifted off in hairy, drawn-out strings before dispersing along the quays, and soon the River Barrow, dark as stout, swelled up with rain.

The people, for the most part, unhappily endured the weather: shop-keepers and tradesmen, men and women in the post office and the dole queue, the mart, the coffee shop and supermarket, the bingo hall, the pubs and the chipper all commented, in their own ways, on the cold and what rain had fallen, asking what was in it---and could there be something in it---for who could believe that there, again, was another raw-cold day? Children pulled their hoods up before facing out to school, while their mothers, so used now to ducking their heads and running to the clothesline, or hardly daring to hang anything out at all, had little faith in getting so much as a shirt dry before evening. And then the nights came on and the frosts took hold again, and the blades of cold slid under doors and cut the knees off those who still knelt to say the rosary."

THE FRIDAY 56 is hosted by Freda's Voice. To play, open a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% on your e-reader). Find a sentence or two and post them, along with the book title and author. Then link up on Freda's Voice and visit others in the linky. 

"The girl stood in a type of trance, and had begun to shake.

'Come on in,' the Mother Superior told him. 'We'll make tea. This is a terrible business.'

'Ah, I'll not,' Furlong stepped back---as though the step could take him back into the time before this.

'You'll come in,' she said. "I'll not have it otherwise.'"

The purpose of THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, and befriend other bloggers. THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is hosted by Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.    

January 20th - 26th - Do you use social media to keep up with your favorite authors? (submitted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer)

I try. 

Writers quickly join social media, like FB and Twitter and IG, but they just as quickly seem to abandon it. 

I back off from social media that seems largely mean-spirited and/or a time-waste, too. 

I tend to gravitate to my blog where the community is gentler and kinder.