Somehow half of November has flown by. We hope you’ve been enjoying reading and reviewing short books this month. So far we have had 40 participants and 84 posts! Remember to add your posts to the link-up, or alert us via a comment here or on Bluesky (@cathybrown746.bsky.social / @bookishbeck.bsky.social), Instagram (@cathy_746books / @bookishbeck), or X (@cathy746books / @bookishbeck).
If you haven’t already, there’s no better time to pick up our buddy read, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, which won the Booker Prize on Tuesday evening. Chair of judges Edmund de Waal said it is “about a wounded world” and that the panel’s “unanimity about Orbital recognises its beauty and ambition.” I was surprised to learn that it is only the second-shortest Booker winner; Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald is even shorter.
Another popular novella many of us have read is Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (my latest review is here). I went to see the excellent film adaptation, with a few friends from book club, at our tiny local arthouse cinema on Wednesday afternoon. I’ve read the book twice now – I might just read it a third time before Christmas – and from memory the film is remarkably faithful to its storyline and scope. (The only significant change I think of is that Bill doesn’t visit Ned in the hospital, but there are still flashbacks to the role that Ned played in Bill’s early life.)
The casting and cinematography are exceptional. Cillian Murphy portrays Bill with just the right blend of stoicism, meekness, and angst. Emily Watson is chilling as Sister Mary, the Mother Superior of the convent, which is suitably creepy with dim brick hallways and clinical laundry rooms. The grimy cobbles and dull streetlamps of the town contrast with the warm light in the scenes of Bill’s remembered childhood at Mrs Wilson’s. Repeated shots – of Bill’s truck setting off across the bridge in the early morning, of him scrubbing coal dust from his hands with carbolic soap, of his eyes wide open in the middle of the night – are not recursive but a way of establishing the gruelling nature of his tasks and the unease that plagues him. A life of physical labour has aged him beyond 39 (cf. Murphy is 48) and he’s in pain from shouldering sacks of coal day in and day out.
Both book and film are set in 1985 but apart from the fashions and the kitschy Christmas decorations and window dressings you’d be excused for thinking it was the 1950s. Bill’s business deals in coal, peat and tinder; rural Ireland really was that economically depressed and technologically constrained. (Another Ireland-set film I saw last year, The Miracle Club, is visually very similar – it even features two of the same actors – although it takes place in 1967. It’s as if nothing changed for decades.)
By its nature, the film has to be a little more overt about what Bill is feeling (and generally not saying, as he is such a quiet man): there are tears at Murphy’s eyes and anxious breathing to make Bill’s state of mind obvious. Yet the film retains much of the subtlety of Keegan’s novella. You have to listen carefully during the conversation between Bill and Sister Mary to understand she is attempting to blackmail him into silence about what goes on at the convent.
At the end of the film showing, you could have heard a pin drop. Everyone was stunned at the simple beauty of the final scene, and the statistics its story is based on. It’s truly astonishing that Magdalene Laundries were in operation until the late 1990s, with Church support. Rage and sorrow build in you at the very thought, but Bill’s quietly heroic act of resistance is an inspiration. What might we, ordinary people all, be called on to do for women, the poor, and the oppressed in the years to come? We have no excuse not to advocate for them.
(Arti of Ripple Effects has also reviewed the film here.)
So far this month I’ve read nine novellas and reviewed eight. One of these was a one-sitting read, and I have another pile of ones that I could potentially read of a morning or evening next week. I’m currently reading another 16 … it remains to be seen whether I will average one a day for the month!
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 
Oh, I’ll definitely have to look out for this film. It’s now quite some time since I read this particular Keegan, but I remember it well, and the strong ’50s vibe that it had.
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Well worth your time.
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👍
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For some reason, Small Things Like These wasn’t my cup of tea as a novella—I found it all a bit obvious—but I bet I’d love it as a film, from your description. Odd how that can happen!
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Funnily enough, that was my initial reaction. I thought it was rather simplistic and the nuns were cartoon villains (3.5*). It was only on a rereading that I raised it to 5*. So reading mood and timing definitely make a difference. Similarly, I can imagine myself being more enraptured with Orbital at some future point.
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I had a few issues with Small Things Like These but I am keen to see the film. Glad to hear you enjoyed it.
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It’s so well cast. I think you’d love it.
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I saw the film a week or so ago and thought it was excellent too. At first I wondered if you might be confused if you hadn’t read the book but then I began to be pleased that the film made us work in the same way that the book does, the flashbacks aren’t just handed to us, we have to work out his story. Really Excellent.
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Yes, I agree one has to pay close attention, whether familiar with the story or not. Even having read the novella twice, I needed to be on my toes to piece together Bill’s past.
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I listened to the audio version of Small Things Like These. What powerful writing. A simple story with a profound impact. I recently read Foster and had the same reaction.
I am participating in Novellas in November for the first time this year. <a href=”https://headfullofbooks.blogspot.com/2024/11/review-orbital-friday56-linkup.html“>Orbital</a>
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Keegan is such a master of the short form. Thank you for joining us in the buddy read of Orbital! Glad you enjoyed it.
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Not sure I want to see the film because I loved the book. Maybe…
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I can understand that. But I loved both!
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Your description of the out-of-time feeling reminds me of when I read and watched Angela’s Ashes, and had to remind myself that it was the 1930s, it felt almost Victorian… I will watch this when I’m ready for a good cry, probably!
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It’s rural Ireland — ‘backward’ seems like a mean choice of word, but it’s true!
I definitely had tears in my eyes.
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It sounds amazing. I love how you’ve described the final scene. This is something I learned about from The Magdalene Sisters (2002), such a powerful and haunting film (perhaps a little more character-driven, but I can’t tell for sure obvs). I saw it twice, but back then I didn’t mind returning to sad stories.
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The Magdalene Sisters I saw probably a few years after it came out, so the history was familiar to me before I read Small Things. That’s probably fair to say: the individual girls don’t get very much representation in Keegan’s story, which is focused more on Bill Furlong and his moral dilemma.
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Oh dear, I read 11 novellas and I didn’t add any of them to your page! I did tag all the reviews NovNov24 but I don’t expect you to go scratching around looking for them. It was great to have short books to read as I worked my way through my massive Wolfson History Prize read!
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I think I’ve found and linked to all of yours as we’ve gone along, but I’ll double check.
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That’s so kind of you, thank you
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I could only find 7, Liz. What am I missing?
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Most posts had two books reviewed so that sounds right.
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7 books, I meant: 3 posts with 2 each, then Bound separately…
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[…] For this year’s Novellas in November, I reviewed a total of 30 short books, so I achieved my goal of reading the equivalent of one short book for each day of the month! The standouts were (nonfiction) Without Exception by Pam Houston and (fiction) On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan, which was a reread for me. Other highlights included The House of Dolls by Barbara Comyns, Recognising the Stranger by Isabella Hammad, and Island by Julian Hanna. I also reviewed a film based on a novella, Small Things Like These. […]
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[…] was an odd experience: having seen the big-screen adaptation just last month, the blow-by-blow was overly familiar to me and I saw Cillian Murphy and Emily […]
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