Yesssss! He mentions his own mother, and I do think the fact that he was a man raised by women, with several daughters, has humbled him and made him more considerate as a person

🥹🥹🥹

Cillian Murphy??? Omg 😳

The film has been made already. It came out at the Berlin film festival. Emily Watson won best supporting actress playing the mother superior and it stars Cillian Murphy as Bill. There's a clip on KZfaq

thanks for the highlight, as someone not middle class, gonna check out the book

yup yup yup 🤩🫶

Very well put!

Ups, now i convinced someone to read a book! My life ist complete😊 Have a nice day!

Not yet! This was my first of hers and I’m going to read everything else asap

Excellent review and I second the recommendation for Foster. Also a small masterpiece.

I don’t think you should feel guilty about that. I’ve had commenters tell me they couldn’t finish a book because it was too heavy or painful, while I happily finished the book. I could tell that it was very good and judge its artistic merit, but I wasn’t struck by it like many people were. These things happen :)

I think Keegan was going for realism. You have to remember this is a small religious town, takes place in 80s Ireland with the flashbacks in the 40s and people who live there are mostly working class. I’m not sure why you think morality in the book is split by gender or women are the only victims of the church. Everyone in the town is a victim of the church. Women in the story also do in fact stand up to the church in their own way. The wealthy woman who takes his mother and him in, actively defies the church by doing so and is a good moral thing to do. This would have been incredibly unorthodox, but she is older, has money and isn’t overly religious so she’s not concerned with blowback from the church or community. The shopkeeper he has a brief interaction with is a woman. They have a conversation about their daughters being in choir. She mentions her daughter was either moved down or removed altogether. In small religious communities this is a big signal to everyone else that you did something wrong in the eyes of the church. She’s being punished for something. Their talk is a roundabout way of warning him about repercussions if he speaks about whatever it is he wasn’t supposed to see. She does this in an attempt to protect him. It’s also unknown if everyone in the town knows exactly what is going on at the Laundry. It leans more towards willful ignorance, because Mother Superior can explain everything away and people are reacting as they’ve been taught their whole life. Sit down and listen to the nun. The Mother Superior also gives him money, so it’s hinted that anyone who sees something they shouldn’t is also given a “gift”. Which to most would be very much needed. There’s multiple instances where people can’t pay Bill for their order. This is not a wealthy community. To expect characters to not worry about repercussions of going against the church when they control so much is unrealistic. Education and reputations being the biggest of those things. Even the girls running to Bill for help IS them defying the church and standing up for themselves. They will be punished for this. Bill is helping a girl in the end just as he was helped by the wealthy woman , despite all the consequences that will inevitably happen to him and his family. Standing up for yourself gets punishment here. Which we see a lot. It just seems odd to me that your main criticism of this book is that a real life Irish woman who is using her voice to speak out against the real church and shine a light on the real Laundries did not use more fictional woman characters. Look at what happened to people in the 80s and 90s when they spoke out against the Catholic Church. Sinead O Connor, ripping a photo of the pope on SNL. Death threats and mockery. The journalists who broke the story about the Catholic Church hiding abuse against mostly young boys. Threats. People tried to suppress the story etc. But somehow a working class community, that has a fair amount of women who stay at home and have less resources is supposed to stand up against the thing they’ve been taught is “true and right” their whole lives? If you think no woman dares stand up for herself in this book, you don’t fully know how strong the hold a strict religion is in smaller communities and what the repercussions look like and how people talk about it.