Fiction, 2022
Tuesdays and Thursdays are annoying days for me. I have classes scattered throughout the day that leave me with hour long gaps in between. There’s not enough time to properly relax, take a long nap, or finish a substantial amount of work. By the fourth week of the semester, I think I’ve cracked it. All I have to do is get a small novel and read it during these aimless hours so that by the end of the day, I have accomplished something. Small Things Like These was the first successful example of this routine proposal.
This is a soft book, not in the content, but in the words used. It felt like a dream sequence one might have if they were trapped in a snow globe. Until, of course, the bell jar of it all starts to suffocate, the people around you are suddenly suspicious, and you uncover something so silently sinister that you have no choice but to intervene. The character in the snow globe (read: a small Irish town) is a father and husband whose days are categorised by the coal orders he receives, and then delivers. This mundanity is never broken, even when he meets someone who needs his help—who needs anybody’s help. Keegan unravels the story with such tenderness that I felt the need to flip each page with the care it deserved.
A few days ago, I went into a Wikipedia loophole during class. We were talking about the Tokyo Trials, which made me research comfort women, which eventually led to the Magdalene laundries. It felt uncanny that I read this book the next day, knowing absolutely nothing about it. It almost felt like a little snow globe of my own.
Film - The Banshees of Inisherin
Song - Eleanor Rigby
would it be a bad thing ?!?!
<3<3<3