In October of 2018, Anna Burns became the first writer from Northern Ireland to win the Man Booker Prize, with her Troubles-set novel Milkman. Since then, the book has gone from strength to strength, winning the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and being longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction as well. Considering that in the news lately Northern Ireland tends to be accompanied by words such as Brexit, border and backstop, it seems like an ideal time to bring the conversation back to that other ‘B’ word: books.
If Burns has piqued your curiosity and you are keen to discover more fiction from the North of Ireland, you are in the right place. Below you will find a list of recommendations of Northern Irish novels, generally with a focus on the Troubles. This list is by no means exhaustive and nor is it intended to be a definitive "best of". These are just some of my personal favourites and hopefully there will be something of interest to start or continue your journey through this field. If you have any suggestions you would like to add, please do share them in the comments below.
Milkman – Anna Burns
If you haven’t read Milkman yet, do. Many critics have, unfairly, I believe, described it as a challenging, difficult read. It is not really. As with any book, one must adapt and attune oneself to the narrative and there is no denying that Burns’ young narrator uses a jarringly different style, but different doesn’t necessarily mean difficult. Indeed, when you become more accustomed to it, the prose has quite an oral quality to it. Strikingly, and this is another aspect that has come in for some criticism, the novel is almost devoid of proper nouns: characters and places are not named. There is something incredibly powerful about stripping identity away in a setting where it has so much importance. This is a novel that has a lot to say and manages to be at once very contemporary and relevant to the present day, and also an excellent addition to the body of serious literary responses to the conflict in Northern Ireland. The tense atmosphere of gossip, being watched and constant threat will have you racing through it, and perhaps even reading while walking.
Fat Lad – Glenn Patterson
Glenn Patterson is one of my favourite authors – from anywhere – and few, if any, Belfast writers have written as consistently well as he has about his city and the Troubles. Indeed, this list could be entirely made up of Glenn Patterson novels. Fat Lad is perhaps his most ambitious, it sets out to be and is billed as the Belfast novel, with a truly glowing endorsement essay from another Belfast literary big-hitter, Robert McLiam Wilson, featured as an addendum. Fat Lad tells the story of a city over several decades through the history of a family and centres on the life of Drew Linden who somewhat reluctantly returns to his birthplace after studying in England. Although perhaps not as instantly accessible as some of his other books, Fat Lad is well-crafted, rich and rewarding, and, like all Patterson’s work, brilliantly written and full of astute observations.
See also by this author: The International, Burning Your Own, The Mill for Grinding Old People Young.
Where They Were Missed – Lucy Caldwell
It was a Guardian article by the aforementioned Glenn Patterson that led me to this novel and it blew me away with its tragic beauty. A story of domestic pain set against the backdrop of the Troubles, the narrative takes place partly in Belfast and partly in rural Donegal. Caldwell evokes with excruciating clarity the intensity of personal suffering through protagonist Saoirse, a daughter of a mixed marriage: her mother a Catholic and her father a Protestant and a policeman. It is perhaps the perspective afforded by time and distance that enables her to make sense of her past, her family and her city.
See also by this author: Multitudes.
The Good Son – Paul McVeigh
After reading Caldwell’s novel, she was kind enough to recommend some further Belfast reading to me on Twitter. Much of it is still on my to-read list, but one that I did get round to and that stood out was The Good Son, a debut novel, like her own listed above. This is a coming-of-age story about a working-class Belfast boy who doesn’t fit in: he detests violence and gets on better with his mother than with the other boys. Mickey dreams of escaping to America, well beyond the claustrophobic confines of his Ardoyne estate where the IRA rule the roost and his peers view his difference with suspicion. This novel won the Polari Prize for LGBT+ writing and was chosen as Brighton’s City Read in 2016. Both heartwarming and laugh-out-loud funny, it’s easy to understand the fuss.
No Mate for the Magpie – Frances Molloy
An underrated gem of Troubles fiction and another with an authentic working-class voice. This time, we accompany Derry girl Ann from her schooldays to adulthood. Written entirely in an engaging vernacular, this is a nuanced novel that places social class at the forefront of the Troubles narrative and questions accepted norms and authority figures whenever encountered. It deals, too, with the fatalistic perpetuity of prejudice and, yet, despite its serious contribution to Troubles literature, manages to be very funny in places. Using humour in the exploration of difficult and complex subject matter is something that a number of the books on this list have in common.
Eureka Street – Robert McLiam Wilson
Perhaps the most complete novel ever written about the Troubles. Despite his modest assertions that Glenn Patterson got there first and got there better, I’m not so sure. This is both a great Troubles novel and a manifesto for what one should be like, with an early passage throwing shade on so-called “Troubles Trash”. This is another work that highlights and emphasises the theme of social class and underlines the importance of economic factors in a conflict often boiled down to religious differences. Eureka Street is set in the 1990s, around the time of a ceasefire, and its main protagonists, Jake and Chucky, friends across the religious divide, provide plenty of entertainment. McLiam Wilson’s haughty narrative voice is cuttingly witty but also delivers sharp, serious observations.
Ghost Moth – Michèle Forbes
Beautiful prose that deals with themes of memory, returning, forgiveness and a troubled past, all so pertinent in the literature of the North of Ireland. Jumping between 1949 and the tense summer of 1969, the past threatens to unsettle the present both personally and politically.
Reading in the Dark – Seamus Deane
Shortlisted for the Booker in 1996, this wonderfully crafted novel shifts between Derry and Donegal, between fantasy and reality, between legend and truth. Through the eyes of a child we see the political unrest of the 1940s and 50s in a welcome reminder that the period referred to now as the Troubles didn’t just spring up out of nowhere in 1969.
Call My Brother Back – Michael McLaverty
This classic and brilliant novel takes us even further back in time, to the early twentieth century and the conflict of the 1920s. Colm MacNeill is raised on Rathlin Island, where there is not even a policeman to watch over them, but a change in circumstance sees the family obliged to move to Belfast. There things will become more complicated, both individually and on a grander scale.
See also by this author: Collected Short Stories.
Cal – Bernard MacLaverty
A powerful and moving novel that examines the difficulty of not getting mixed up in things. Young Cal, a Catholic who lives with his father in a Protestant housing estate, reluctantly becomes an accessory in an IRA operation and gets in way over his head.