A really interesting meditation on kindness, complicity and second chances. The story, which tackles the monstrous subject matter of the Irish state-run institutions known as Magdalene laundries, is bookended with a promise by the state to 'cherish its children equally' and an apology, for its failure to do so.
New Ross coalman, Bill Furlong, is deeply troubled by what he encounters at the local convent after delivering fuel there. He himself is only one step removed, having been born out of wedlock but saved from a life of cruelty and neglect in the laundry by his mother's widowed and wealthy employer.
A person has to be able to look themselves in the mirror and despite the collective connivance of church-state-citizenry, through the character of Furlong, we come face to face with our conscience. And there are reflections everywhere. Furlong glimpses a version of himself in the sparkling pots at the convent, in the bathroom mirror, the reflection of his headlights in the convent windowpanes as though he were meeting himself there, so too his imaginative life is replete with various versions of himself. Furlong's childhood gift of 'A Christmas Carol' gestures towards the way Scrooge must examine his life, too, but also foregrounds Furlong's kindly nature - he gives to the poor, helps people out, performs small acts of kindness wherever he goes - he is 'Foster's' Kinsella. He sits at home at night, like the Cratchits, counting his blessings.
Keegan's eye for detail is unparalleled, every page is an inventory of small things: dogs foraging, drunk lads coming home, Christmas cake ingredients, toasting slabs of soda bread, a daughter genuflecting, rooks cawing, coaldust under a fingernail, a girl with breast milk leaking and on - squarely, a Breugel painting! The book cover is a crop of Hunters in the Snow. Breugel was a master of small details and his early painting style featured dozens of figures in panoramic landscapes seen from an elevated view - 'the convent was a powerful looking place on the hill.'
The river Barrow runs throughout the story, heralding gloom. It's 'dark as stout', young women want to drown in it, it's cursed by medieval monks to take three lives each year yet, Furlong, straining to find his course, envies it, 'how easily the water followed its incorrigible way so freely to the sea.'
It's poignant that the spirit of goodwill signalled by the introduction of Lewis Caroll's novel was the reverse of the church's ethos, then and now.