Claire Keegan

was there any point in being alive without helping one another?

understand why women feared men with their physical strength and lust and social powers, but women, with their canny intuitions, were so much deeper: they could predict what was to come long before it came, dream it overnight, and read your mind. He’d had moments, in his marriage, when he’d almost feared Eileen and had envied her mettle, her red-hot instincts

But people said lots of things – and a good half of what was said could not be believed; never was there any shortage of idle minds or gossips about town

Always, Christmas brought out the best and the worst in people.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown

His mother, at the age of sixteen, had fallen pregnant while working as a domestic for Mrs Wilson, the Protestant widow who lived in the big house a few miles outside of town.

Now, he lived in the town with his wife, Eileen, and their five daughters.

Some nights, Furlong lay there with Eileen, going over small things like these.

He was touching forty but didn’t feel himself to be getting anywhere or making any kind of headway and could not but sometimes wonder what the days were for.

Did she ever imagine how her life would be if she had married another?