#76 in Historical fiction
Small Things Like These
- 112
- Pages
- about 2 h
- Reading time
- NYT bestseller · 1 week on the list
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Our view
Keegan’s novella is about a quiet moral test: what a decent person does on noticing suffering that everyone around has agreed not to see. Almost all of the drama is internal, and the prose, attentive to the everyday, is the main reward. Readers waiting for a larger event may reach the last of its 112 pages feeling that little has happened.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Small Things like These is a historical fiction novella by Claire Keegan, published on 21 October 2021 by Faber and Faber. In 2022, the book won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Booker Prize. It was adapted into a film of the same name starring Cillian Murphy.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.1 across 832 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 85% of the weight and the score stays at 8.1 — the Historical fiction average of 8.0 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.5 | 15 | 2% |
| Hardcover | 8.1 | 817 | 98% |
Frequently asked
How long is Small Things Like These?
It has 112 pages — shorter than 99% of the ranked books in Historical fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Historical fiction — and a score of 8.1, the closest to this book.
