Oprah Winfrey just picked out the latest book for her book club.
The selection is Claire Keegan’s novel, Small Things Like These, with the Irish author having a conversation with the former The Oprah Winfrey Show on her newest pursuit, The Oprah Podcast.
Mainly, the show revolves around the conversation the TV personality has with the authors chosen to be featured in her book club.
In the latest novel selected, the story is a about a coal merchant, Bill Furlong, who crosses the morals of his small town after his encounter with a woman from the Magdalene laundries in 1985.
That particular institution, run by the Catholic Church, was established to force women into unpaid labor as punishment for breaching moral code of conducts.
In her appearance on the podcast, Keegan, on writing the novel, told Oprah, “I didn’t have any relative or anybody I knew in the laundries.”
She continued, “It was just all over the news for a long time in Ireland. And I think the question I was interested in was, why did people do nothing when the police knew, the social workers knew and the parents knew. The Catholic church knew, the priests knew, the nuns knew and nobody did anything.”
“I wasn’t able to not ask the question while I was writing,” the writer added, further noting, “Really, I think the book is a response to my asking the question.”
