#259: Girl Troubles
Michelle Gallen grew up in Northern Ireland\u2019s County Tyrone amid the period of sectarian bloodshed known as the Troubles. By the time she left home for university in the 1990s, her town was neatly segregated, with Protestants sticking to their neighborhoods and Catholics to theirs. Gallen\u2019s new novel, Factory Girls, takes place in a town much like this during the summer of 1994. While waiting for her final exam results, Maeve Murray lands a job at a shirt factory working alongside her best friends, Aoife O\u2019Neill and Caroline Jackson\u2014and a gaggle of Protestants. It\u2019s the first time in their lives that the girls have spent time with \u201cthe other side\u201d (let alone working under the thumb of a British boss). As tensions rise outside the factory, the temperature rises within it, too, and what started as a summer job ends up teaching\u2014and costing\u2014Maeve more than she imagined.
Go beyond the episode:
- Michelle Gallen\u2019s Factory Girls
- Listen to Nicola Coughlan read Gallen\u2019s debut novel Big Girl, Small Town
- We do love Derry Girls, too
- In 1993, Dolores O\u2019Riordan wrote the most heartbreaking song about the Troubles: \u201cZombie,\u201d which the Cranberries released in 1994 after the first ceasefire
- There are dozens of books about the Troubles\u2014we recommend starting with Richard English\u2019s Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA
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