About the Book
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I think half of Ireland is standing at a sink.
Washing plates that will only get dirty again. Thinking about the same person they have lived beside for years and wondering if it is love or just routine that keeps them from screaming.
That is where The Things We Kept begins.
With Margaret Greene, up to her elbows in Fairy Liquid, washing the evidence of another quiet dinner while her husband sits behind her, chewing chicken skin and watching football.
He is not cruel. He is not kind either. He is just there.
A man who believes gravy and poems can hold a marriage together.
Margaret is tired.
Tired of work, of church, of the sound of her own name coming from the mouth of a man she stopped loving sometime between the second child that never was and the first job she could not quit.
In the attic is something she buried years ago, a book that once made her feel powerful before life made her small.
When she finds it again, everything she has swallowed for decades begins to rise.
James, meanwhile, is still at the table thinking love is about staying put.
He writes her notes stolen from love songs and keeps old tickets from the days they were young.
He is the kind of man who mistakes endurance for devotion.
The Things We Kept is a short, darkly funny Irish story about marriage, faith, and the strange comfort of habit.
It is about women who pray while they curse, men who mean well and still manage to ruin things, and the quiet magic that lives in ordinary houses.
It is not a horror story, though it has ghosts.
Not a comedy, though you might laugh out loud and then feel bad for doing it.
It is simply a story about two people who stayed too long in the same life and what happens when one of them decides to change the ending.
I wrote it because I wanted to capture that Irish kind of love that is not hearts and flowers, but cups of tea, small cruelties, and doing the same thing every day because you do not know what else to do.
It is short enough to read in a single sitting, long enough to stay with you after.
If you have ever looked across the table at someone you once adored and wondered who you both became, this one is for you.
The Things We Kept
A darkly funny Irish story about love, faith, and the women who have had enough.
Available now on Kindle and paperback.
(And yes, there is Fairy Liquid. There is always Fairy Liquid.)
About the Author
J.M. Lane is an Irish author whose work blends dark humour, heartbreak, and a touch of the supernatural. His bestselling debut, Setanta and the Lady by the Water, reimagines Irish myth through a modern lens, weaving legend and family into a haunting, lyrical tale that has captivated readers across Ireland and beyond.
His second bestseller, The Things We Kept, turns from myth to the domestic, exploring marriage, faith, and the quiet magic that lives inside ordinary houses. Both stories share Lane’s unmistakable voice — Irish to the bone, darkly funny, and unflinchingly human.
When he isn’t writing, he can usually be found with his beautiful wife and children, a notebook, and the next story that will not leave him alone.
Oh, and his dog, Linda from HR
Qn 1: Can you tell us more about your book What is it about?
Every woman has a breaking point.
Margaret Greene found hers at the kitchen sink.
For Something to Become Nothing — a short, sharp Irish novella about marriage, faith, and the dangerous comfort of old habits.
Qn 2: Who do you think would be interested in this book, is it directed at any particular market?
house wife’s and other woman in the mood for a quick funny read with all profits going to charities that support cancer patients
Qn 3: Out of all the books in the world, and all the authors, which are your favourite and why?
I always come back to The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It’s love at the end of the world. Everything is gone, language, hope, even kindness, and still that father keeps the fire alive for his son. It’s the simplest and truest thing I’ve ever read about being a parent.
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry is another one I return to. Barry writes Ireland the way it really feels, beautiful, haunted, and full of stories nobody tells straight. Every line feels like confession and prayer at the same time.
Anne Enright’s The Green Road is one I admire deeply. Nobody writes family like her. She understands that love and cruelty can live in the same room. Her writing feels like eavesdropping on people you know too well.
I’ve always loved The Once and Future King by T. H. White. I read it as a child for the magic and the swords, and later for the heartbreak in it. It’s about growing up, doing terrible things, and still trying to be good.
Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss is small, sharp, and tense. It’s about control, history, and the things we inherit without realising. You can feel it pressing on your chest as you read.
The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe is pure madness and truth. It’s funny and horrifying in the same breath. It showed me that darkness and humour belong together.
And The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. Death telling a love story shouldn’t work, but it does. It’s about holding on to stories when everything else is falling apart.
Qn 4: What guidance would you offer to someone new, or trying to enhance their writing?
Write the story that won’t leave you alone. Don’t wait to feel ready. You learn by doing.
Read more than you write, and read outside your comfort zone. Poetry teaches rhythm and silence.
Finish things, even if they’re rough. A bad finished story teaches more than a perfect half one.
And protect your love for it. That’s the only part that really matters.
Qn 5: Where can our readers find out more about you, do you have a website, or a way to be contacted?
The best place is my website, www.jmlaneauthor.com. I share updates there about new books, short stories, and events. I’m also on Instagram and Facebook, usually posting about writing, family, and whatever story has hold of me at the time.
And of course, you can find my books on Amazon — Setanta and the Lady by the Water, The Things We Kept, and the rest that are still keeping me up at nigh
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