After a run of mediocre reads, I needed a palate cleanser. Claire Keegan obliged with this sparse, compact story of a middle-aged man who, grown weary of the ordinary repetitions of daily life, untethers himself from the norm via an extraordinary act of rebellious compassion.

“Small Things Like These” is thin – a novella, really – so to reveal even a little about the story is almost to say too much: Set in a small Irish town in the mid-1980s, a time of economic grimness, the story centers on Bill Furlong, proprietor of the local coal business. He is a family man with a wife and five daughters. His comforts, while moderate, are leagues from his beginnings as the son of the unwed housekeeper of the town’s wealthiest matron.

As a boy, the matron’s patronage spared him from the harshness of the local Catholic shelters. Years later as a man, he discovers something in such a shelter – for girls – that disturbs him deeply and compels him to confront not only his own complicity in what he sees, but that of the entire town.

I am late to find Keegan, but grateful I did. She crafts savory sentences that linger in the mind, especially when read out loud. Here, for example, is the opening paragraph:

“In October there were yellow trees. Then the clocks went back the hour and the long November winds came in and blew, and stripped the trees bare. In the town of New Ross, chimneys threw out smoke which fell away and drifted off in hairy, drawn-out strings before dispersing along the quays, and soon the River Barrow, dark as stout, swelled up with rain.”

Highly recommended.