Anatomy of a one-night read

 I’d deny that I’m obsessed with one-night reads, short books that will absorb you for a single evening. I admit that this is my 20^th note on that subject. But I just wanted to say that Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These is a one-night read that works so well, I’ve been trying to figure out how it works.

It’s got several things going for it:

• Length: The site How Long to Read estimates it at 38,272 words, which strikes me as too precise to be an estimate and which I can’t quite buy. I’d guess 24,000. I’m not a great movie watcher. But there is something nice about being able to absorb a story in about the time it takes to watch a film.

• Pace: Although Keegan’s story is short, she takes her time. The protagonist, Furlong, confronts the situation he must resolve on page 61 of a 114-page story. I had to go back and reread the story to see how many times and in how many ways Keegan had foreshadowed the moral tension at the heart of the story. By the time Furlong sees the situation he must face, we already have a sense that people generally fail moral challenges because they’re just trying to conform, just trying to get along with everyone else.

• Substories: There’s a story within this story involving a jigsaw puzzle. When Furlong was a boy, he wrote Santa a letter asking for one. The story — what happened then and what happened when Furlong told one of his daughters about it — is worth price of admission.

• Diction: You might know that a Baby Power is Powers whiskey in a miniature bottle. I had to look some things up. I was delighted to learn that a puckaun is a Billy goat. I’d never heard drunkard who is slurring his speech called stotious.

• Puzzles: Keegan’s writing is clear. But she left me, at least, with a puzzle or two — things I’m still thinking about days after finishing the story. There are omens in the book — and one curse, an ancient one involving River Barrow. I’m trying to sort out the crows. They are numerous, noisy and loaded with symbolism. I suspect both symbols and crows are tricky.

• Sources and notes: Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These; New York: Grove Press, 2017.

How Long to Read’s estimate is here:

https://howlongtoread.com/books/17047811/Small-Things-Like-These

The search feature on the archives says this really is the 20^th note on one-night reads. The first was “The notion of one-night reads at 20,” Oct. 28, 2021.