At 116 pages, Irish writer Claire Keegan’s historical novel Small Things Like These (Faber) is the slimmest book ever to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize. But the 2022 winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction is a work of heft that outweighs its size as it contemplates the dark underbelly of faith. Set in 1985, among a small Irish community, Keegan’s tale examines Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries scandal that came to light in 1993. The Catholic-run and state-backed Magdalene Laundries operated in Ireland between the 18th and late 20th centuries and were ostensibly a charitable organisation to rehabilitate “fallen women”, or prostitutes. In 1993, the discovery of unmarked graves of 150 such women on the convent grounds of one of the Irish laundries launched an investigation into and revelation of a history of violence, abuse, moral censure and oppression. In 2013, after years of public outrage, the Irish state issued a formal apology. Buy Now | Our best subscription plan now has a special price Small Things Like These is anchored by Bill Furlough, a timber-and-coal merchant, whose unexpected discovery in the weeks leading up to Christmas form the narrative and moral heart of the novel. Despite its brevity, Keegan’s novel went through around 50 drafts before it reached its conclusive version. In an interview to the Booker Library on her shortlist nomination, Keegan says, “I’m more interested in going in than going on. There’s a wonderful letter (Anton) Chekhov wrote to his brother Alexander about the meaning of grace, how grace is when you make the least number of movements between two points — and that type of athletic prose has always appealed to me, coupled with light-handedness and restraint. Elegance, to me, is writing just enough. And, as James Baldwin said, in his Paris Review interview, ‘the hardest thing in the world is simplicity’.” Interestingly, though Keegan's novel is the shortest book, based on its number of pages, to be shortlisted for the Booker, fellow Booker nominee Alan Garner’s Treacle Walker (Fourth Estate) has fewer words. Of course, the history of the Booker Prizes has other instances of short novels vying for the prestigious annual award. In 1979, Penelope Fitzgerald’s 132-pages-novel Offshore won the £ 50,000 award. Other short works of fiction that made it to the awards’ shortlist include Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach (166 pages), that was shortlisted in 2007, and Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending, which, at 163 pages, won the Booker Prize in 2011.
