The "Magdalene Laundry" scandal under Claire Keegan's pen on "such little things"

From Varieties to Novels (2/5) – Unmarried Mothers Exploited by Catholic Sisters … In 2020, Irish author Claire Keegan captured the ugliness of the Magdalene laundry that rocked her country in the 1990s and presented a short and beautiful novel. Choice to speak or be silent. The second part of our series on various facts was transformed into thrillers.

She submitted her novel “Women and children imprisoned in Magdalene laundry in Ireland”, His hometown. Inn Such little things, First published in France in 2020 (in English a year later), Claire Keegan accompanies Bill Furlong, a wood and coal merchant from New Rose, into his daily life in the winter of 1985. One slowly approaches the Good Shepherd’s Convent run by the nuns and its thriving laundry business.

So, the reader at the same time finds out how the sisters build up a tremendous fortune behind the unfortunate girls they exploit. A circular path, but essential, is to remember that the silence of a population is also a form of guilt. Because, in the area where Bill Furlong lives, there are rumors circulating in the streets about these teenagers being seen disappearing at birth, dying or being sold to wealthy families when some of them become pregnant.