When he was born, his mother was an unmarried teenager, ostracised by her family but permitted to continue working respectably as a maid by her kind-hearted employer.

While delivering coal to the local convent, he begins to suspect that their supposed training school for girls is, in fact, a cruelly abusive Magdalene laundry.

On another visit, the local pub owner warns him not to publicly criticise the convent since the church is involved in all parts of town life.

"[13] A similar sentiment was echoed in the Los Angeles Times, who wrote, "Keegan, whose short stories contain unusual depth and grandeur, is the only contemporary writer who could manage the feat of a completely imagined, structured and sustained world with such brevity.

Keegan's prose was referred to as "surprisingly powerful," "languid and crystalline"[15] in Booklist, as well as "quiet and precise, jewel-like in its clarity"[7] in Library Journal.

Further, the Financial Times noted, "Keegan has a keen ear for dialect without letting it overwhelm conversations,"[16] and Damon Galgut wrote in The Times Literary Supplement: "Keegan knows how to weigh and pace her sentences, and her fine judgement delivers many subtle pleasures ... [she] fully exploits the power of understatement.

"[17] Lamorna Ash, writing in The Guardian, noted that Small Things like These does "not feel quite as devastating, as lasting, as Keegan’s previous work[.]