**July book group report**

This month's book was Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. Despite not being a cheerful or easy summer read (wait until you see what next month's is) this novella was a resounding success. It's short - yes - but it hits hard.

The story, set cleverly against the run up to Christmas in small town Eire, is based around one man's slow dawning of understanding of what is going on in the local Magdalene Laundry. Keegan's often clever, humorous turns of phrase give only a slight lift from a story about the horrific abuse committed by Catholic religious communities in many towns in Eire. Shockingly the book is set in 1985 and we were further horrified to find out that the last Magdalene Laundry didn't close until 1996.

Keegan's writing is wonderful and it's a book that demands to be finished despite the subject matter. It's an emotional read - at times viscerally so. The writing is precise and economical managing to say so much, so powerfully, with just a few words - this is 'literature' and a book you won't forget reading.

It was brave of county Wicklow born Keegan to address the strangle hold held by the Catholic church over the communities to which they were intrinsically linked. It made many of us of hope, to paraphrase Albert Einstein, that 'we' would not remain silent and be guilty of complicity if we see things happening in our own communities that we know to be wrong.