This is the other Irish Booker nominee, which I was writing about in my review of The Colony. Thank you to Grove Atlantic/Grove Press and NetGalley for this ARC.

This makes for a beautiful story at any time but it seems very much a Christmas story so I'm glad I've read it now. When the story ends we know there will be strife and hardship ahead but there is also a peace that only a compassionate heart can bring to a man. What happens is where his life was heading, prefaced by his giving of change to the needy, of his generosity to those who needed it, of his desire to treat others well, despite his wife's teasing and complaining about him doing so. And then he sees something he can't let out of his mind.

Is this life worth it?īill is a very good man and it's hard seeing him filled with these doubts about his life. Always with work and worries on his mind, never a break in it all. Six long days a week of work and then every Sunday being like the Sunday before it. For all his reasons to be happy he is wondering if things could have been different.surely he's not thinking maybe they could have been better? He sees his future stretching in an endless routine of the same thing. Instead, thanks to the mercy of a wealthy widow and the attention of her stable hand, Ned, Bill Furlong had a good life, even after his young mother died.īut Bill is feeling unrest. He knows all he cares for could be lost at any moment, knows that as the son of an unwed servant, he could have ended up in a very bad place. Bill Furlong, almost forty, a hard working coal merchant with a wife and five daughters, knows how good he has it. This novella takes place in cold and wintery 1986 Ireland. This book is a short read but will stay with you for so much longer. Like so many small towns, people are struggling to get by, and people are being driven from their homes, heart wrenched, into the cities to find decent jobs. It is set in Ireland where times are hard, economic depression is settling in. If you enjoy It’s A Wonderful Life or the story of The Good Samaritan, you will love this book. One day, near Christmas, he makes a delivery at convent when he discovers something that doesn’t sit quite right with him. Furlong is making ends meet though, delivering fuel in the form of coals and logs to the townspeople. The town has known hard times, factories are closing up, and people are being laid off. They have enough to eat and aren’t living on credit. He has a happy life with his wife and five daughters. Bill Furlong is living a quiet, unglamorous life in Ireland.

Babel 17 delany