A 2022 Booker shortlisted work, apparently the shortest ever nominated, at 110 pages. This flags quality over quantity.
The third person narrator entirely follows the protagonist, Bill as he goes about an Irish country town in the run up to Christmas 1985. He is a family man part of a close knit community. The old and new Ireland are uneasily meeting, but tradition and the power of the church are still strong. Stigma still attaches to unmarried mothers, contraception and abortion. Economic insecurity haunts the town.
The plot unveils as Bill is accidentally faced with realities about the local convent laundry in a first hand way. Does he intervene to stop abuse to a girl, or remain silent? As Christmas nears the internal moral pressure on him builds. What was half known and veiled is now real to him. He has to be grateful for an intervention in his own early life. A moral dilemma builds quietly. Will he act, or settle for the complicity all around him?
Keegan references “A Christmas Carol”, this is about good and bad, acting or not acting, though without the extravagance and theatricality of Dickens. Rather, the writing is precise, focused and very human. No scene is wasted. The circumstances of the wider issues are clear and brought down to the individual, small actions are large for the person, individual actions make change. The locality and characters are skilfully drawn, dialect is present lyrically. The psychology of mental preoccupation in a time of seeming happiness and the weight of the unsaid are palpable. There is a town bridge, a Rubicon, to cross, will Bill cross it, will his country?
The cover of this edition depicts a snowy Bruegel landscape with hunched black figures, which reflects the real dark issues addressed in this book of fiction. Keegan shows us, as good writers do that the best fiction is never “only” fiction.
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