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Review — ‘Small Things Like These’: A Quiet Tale About Life’s Raw Fragility
This moving adaptation of Claire Keegan’s novella sees Cillian Murphy captivate as a father haunted by Christmas ghosts
Tim Mielants’s faithful rendering of Clare Keegan’s Booker-shortlisted 2021 novella feels distinctly bookish in a way I wish John Crowley’s rather twee — but otherwise excellent — 2015 translation of Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn did.
The plot of Small Things Like These is sparse and slow-moving, gently coaxed along by muted interactions between characters, and perhaps doesn’t lend itself particularly well to adaptation — as is often the case with novellas. But I’m more than glad it was, even if for some it may feel lacking in drama.
Small Things asks viewers (like Keegan’s readers) to look closer. Set in 1985, we follow Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy), a coal merchant supplying fuel for the cold, bleak winters that blight the small town of New Ross, south-eastern Ireland. In between managing his strenuous business lugging bags of coal across the town and parenting a bustling family of five girls, the taciturn yet loving Bill is visibly haunted by something. A third version of Bill exists, one who spends insomniac nights pondering the outside world from the living room chair —…
