Small Things Like These
This is a little gem of a book, but one I think the film version only improves. (And that’s rarely the case.) This isn’t to put the book down; in these days of 500-page novels that hit the bookshelves larded with congratulatory quotes, it’s lovely to come across one that tells its story so economically, yet effectively. What I think the film does so well - what I think adds so much to its power - is the way it expands and draws out the conversation between Bill Furlong and Sister Mary. A conversation in which she ever so subtly threatens his daughters with not attending the local school, and in which she bribes him for his silence about the girl she’s had locked in the coal hole outside all night. There’s so much silent menace in this woman of God, and so much quiet resistance in the softly-spoken coal merchant, and it’s one of the things a film can do so well. It can show , whereas a book must describe . I’m really not knocking the book. I think it’s a beautiful piece of wo...
