Ones that make you re-read them immediately, savour them, ones that strike you in some unfathomable way. There are some beautiful sentences that litter the pages.
Brevity whilst making a reader care, making characters real and emotions real, means every word has to be carefully considered. There is a skill to creating a complete, immersive world with fewer words. But it will stay with you for a long time after. It won’t take you long to read, this book of just over 100 pages. He is breaking the unofficial code of silence and is hopefully the first of many. He knows that his quiet, dignified way of handling the situation will have more of an affect than noise, and ruckus and attention. As he becomes more aware of what is happening around him he begins to realise that some small things, silence, turning a blind eye, pretence, build to make something that he can no long ignore.īill’s is a silent protest.
He looks at the little things that have shaped his life, at the small things that he appreciates and fill up his days.
Until one day he doesn’t.īill reflects on his life, on his past, on disappointments and on things that surprised him. He goes about his daily life quietly and without question. He doesn’t stick his head above the parapet. He kicks himself for not doing more, for not giving the gifts he is given to those who have less than him. Hard working, wanting the best for his children, not taking money from the less well off families at Christmas who can’t afford to pay for the fuel he is delivering. He has worked hard to get to where he is, running his own business. Quiet, solid, dependable, raised by a Catholic single mother, in a Protestant household, an almost unheard of thing.
He reflects on his growing family and as he does goes back to memories of his own unorthodox childhood which in turn makes him face the truth of what is being left unsaid about the convent at the edge of town.īill Furlough is a marvellous character. Winter and coal merchant Bill Furlough is busy, ensuring fuel arrives at the homes of the residents in his town. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him - and encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Church. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces into his busiest season.
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