SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE

Aiden Kelly gives a masterful narration of this brief novel, set in a small Irish town in 1985. Bill Furlong, the son of an unwed mother and now a coal merchant with a family, leads a comfortable life. But menace gradually creeps into Kelly's brogue, reflecting the shattering of Furlong's complacency. During a coal delivery to the town's convent, he finds a young woman locked and freezing in an outbuilding. As he learns more, he is shaken by the fate of the occupants of the Magdalene schools/laundries for unwed mothers and their babies. He also discovers how he and his mother avoided this fate. Kelly's chilling rendering of the Mother Superior's caustic voice is all a listener needs to hear to realize that this is no bucolic Irish tale. D.G.P. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine [Published: FEBRUARY 2022]