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I grew up in Northern Ireland, in the quiet seaside town of Bangor, County Down. Although I had moved away before the Troubles started in 1968, I came back occasionally, and happened to be shopping in downtown Belfast during the bombings on "Bloody Friday" in July 1972. My wife and I walked back to the station over sidewalks covered in debris; only my preference for trains meant that this was not the bus station, which took the worst of the attacks.

So my attitude now is complicated. My childhood roots are in Ireland, my mother's land; yet from the age of 11, I was being sent away to school in my father's England. I was a witness to violence, almost a victim; yet most of it I watched on television from America. Almost all the literature I have read about the Troubles has been written from the Catholic perspective, most often in anger—a world away from my own position, which I'd to think of as non-sectarian, but was nonetheless protected by middle-class Protestant privilege. I have read a great deal of Ulster fiction, and there is even more on my TBR pile right now, but the books that have both reflected and added to my own experience have been few and far between: David Park's The Truth Commissioner and Colum McCann's TransAtlantic are a rare two that come to mind. This 1998 novel by Deirdre Madden goes even farther, showing me the country I know, yet taking me into a totally different side of it—rural Catholic as opposed to urban Protestant—and making me realize that we are not so different after all.

The structure is simple. In early 1994, Cate Quinn, who works for a magazine in London, comes home to spend a week with her family in County Antrim; she has a secret to share. The family consists of her older sister Helen, a Belfast lawyer who works with people involved in the violence, and her younger sister Sally, who has returned home to teach on the local school and look after their mother, Emily. Their father has been killed two years earlier, but an uncle and aunt still live close by. Each of the main characters will be given focus in the seven chapters named for the days of that week; alternate chapters go back in time as the girls grow up, the adults go on civil rights marches, and their world turns dark around them.

Writing now, I am sure that this is a five-star book. I was less sure at the start, because its salient qualities—that it is both dense and ordinary—do not in general make for gripping fiction. It has little of the luminosity, for example, of my previous favorite among Madden's books, Authenticity. Yet its denseness comes from the detail of family life, and ordinariness is its essence. Nothing that the Quinns experience, not even the shooting of their father, is the result of particular political activism, let alone terrorism (although their uncle may be more involved). The father is a farmer; the girls are bright, hard-working, curious. Catholic or not, rural or not, the family might well be my own. Certainly the language, the "crack" as we called it, takes me right back to my mother and her friends. Details differ, but they are unimportant. When the Troubles begin, causing a rift between Catholics and Protestants, even between former friends, I find myself now on the other side, seeing it through their eyes. The books by Park and McCann took me into the big action and its consequences; Madden deals utterly believably with the everyday, where not much happens. That is her defining achievement.
For the pattern of their lives was as predictable as the seasons. The regular round of necessity was broken by celebrations and feasts: Christmas, Easter, family birthdays. The scope of their lives was tiny but it was profound, and to them, it was immense. The physical bounds of their world were confined to little more than a few fields and houses, but they knew these places with the deep, unconscious knowledge that a bird or a fox might have for its habitat. The idea of home was something they lived so completely that they would have been at a loss to define it. But they would have known to be inadequate such phrases as: 'It's where you are from,' 'It's the place you live,' 'It's where your family are.' I very much suspect that the novel is at least partly autobiographical. The Quinns live in Toomebridge at the head of Lough Neagh, the large lake lying in the center of the province a splash of tea in the middle of a saucer. Deirdre Madden is from the very same town and the poet Seamus Heaney comes from the same area. My father had business that took him there often when I was a child, and I remember the moist fields, the distant mountains, and the smell of rotting flax; you would think that nothing would change. But Madden's novel is all about change, though it is all in the background. Much of it is negative: the decline of traditional industry, the rise of violence, the deepening rift between the clans. Yet there is also a positive tide that you see only as you look back: the University education of all three daughters, their professional success, and their emancipation from old church shibboleths. And the most significant of all, though merely hinted at: that later in that same year, 1994, the opposing parties would sign their first cease-fire. The peace process had begun.ireland women35 s Lea962 259

A quiet, slow-paced novel from 1997 about three sisters in Northern Ireland and how their childhood during the Troubles and their father's death affected them personally and as a family. At first I didn't find this as gripping as Deirdre Madden's debut "Hidden Symptoms", perhaps because there are so many POVS for such a short book, but in the end I found it the much better and more polished novel.

This is such a subtle and intelligent portrayal of a family caught in a political upheaval, there is no need for melodrama although there's certainly ample opportunity given the subject. The writing is wonderful from the very first page, and although it is quite dense at times and reading it felt work, I was rewarded by a deeply moving reading experience.

I've only discovered the author last week, but now I'm really keen to read her other novels. 2022 ireland read-in-english27 s Barbara1,734 26

I do refer to some novels as stunning. At the end of this novel, I felt stunned. Stunned by its beauty, and its portrayal of a part of the world I love.

Readers who haven’t previously read Northern Irish writers might have the impression that most novels from the North revolve around the Troubles. While the conflict endured from 1969-1998, and beyond, there was life before the Troubles. It is also true that the Catholic minority were marginalized, and second-class citizens for centuries. Northern Ireland has long been a conservative, proscriptive society. Two of the finest novels about the restrictive lives led by women in Belfast are Tea At Four O'Clock by Janet McNeill and The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearneby Brian Moore. The recent novels Midwinter Break by Bernard MacLaverty, the story of the lingering impact of the Troubles on a couple who left Belfast years ago, and The Good Son byPaul McVeigh, set in that time and place, have earned praise. Last year, the poet and novelist Nick Laird wrote an interesting novel Modern Gods, which failed to get the attention it deserved. Deirdre Madden is another Northern writer who has been neglected.

This short novel tells the story of the Quinn family, part of a small Catholic community in and around Ballymena. While the novel doesn’t go into the history of Ballymena, it is useful to know that it is a large town, in what is considered the heart of the “Bible Belt”. It was the birthplace of the actor Liam Neeson, and the politician/clergyman Ian Paisley. It revolves around Kate/Cate who has left Northern Ireland to lead a successful life in London. At home she’s Kate, and in London Cate, a change she made so as not to appear “too” Irish. The book was published in the mid-1990’s and I recall encountering “unfriendly” attitudes towards Ireland and Irish people when I was in England in the early 1990’s. England had suffered bombings at the hands of the IRA, and their troops has experienced many casualties.
The novel opens with Kate/Cate returning home for a visit. The novel has alternating chapters between past and present, with the chapters set in the past eventually catch up to current day. The chapters set in the past create a picture of life in Northern Ireland of the 1950’s and 60’s before the Troubles. Rural Ireland, north and south of the border, was closer to the 19th century even halfway through the 20th. The family carried on customs, for example Halloween games, and tying rags on trees around holy wells, practices that dated back centuries. Kate/Cate is one of three sisters. Helen studied law at Queens University, not common for a Catholic woman in those years, and moved to Belfast to practice law. As an adult, Helen still continues to return home each weekend to her family home. The youngest, Sally, is a teacher in the local school, and the most enmeshed of the sisters in the family. At the center of the novel, is the murder of the family patriarch, their father, by paramilitaries. Although unnamed, they most ly were part of a Protestant paramilitary group, who were targeting the uncle, an IRA sympathizer, and mistook their father for his brother. It is this tragedy that binds the family, through contained grief that they bear silently.

Last Friday August 30th, The Irish Times carried an article by Belfast-born novelist, short story writer, and playwright, Rosemary Jenkinson titled “Belfast, Biros and balaclavas”.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/bo...
Jenkinson commented on writing in the city, first by quoting F.L. Green, author of Odd Man Out, a 1945 novel set in Belfast, and basis for a film starring James Mason. Green wrote of the city: “Things seem to be constantly happening here and the city has an atmosphere that a creative writer needs”. Jenkinson notes : Seventy years on, those words are still relevant and Belfast is a recurrent character in my stories – a bold, boozy, blustering and conflicted presence .

She further writes:
I recently heard… that a relative of my Dad’s cousin had been shot dead in the early eighties. He was a farmer’s son and was going about his work when he was targeted by the IRA. It just goes to show that in this small country nearly every family has undergone a loss. Even minor psychological scars run as deep here as bullet holes but, without them, our writing would not have its passion and depth .
The quote may give the impression that the “passion and depth” of Northern Irish writing is a result of The Troubles. I dare to disagree with Jenkinson, though perhaps it is my interpretation of her words .

The novel is beautifully crafted. It creates a picture of Northern life that explains that the pull of family and community that keeps some people there, and assures others return even if only periodically. I have read several novels set in the same time and place, and I dare to say this may be the best “Troubles” novel I have read. It is quiet, and all never insistent in the way “political” novels can be. I hope that others who read this novel will go on to discover other writers of Northern Ireland. They are probably among the most overlooked writers in the English language, and the literature of Northern Ireland deserves to be center-stage.

around-the-world irish-books literary-fiction ...more12 s Canadian--problems with update feed & notification1,128 103

In this 1996 novel, Deirdre Madden writes movingly about three sisters in their thirties who grew up in rural Northern Ireland as the late 1960s Troubles flared. The novel is premised on the middle sister's visit home to share important news. Beautiful, glamorous Kate (or, as she has preferred to call herself "Cate"--to shave off some of the "Irishness", much to her family's chagrin) fled the misery of her homeland to work for a London fashion magazine. Since tragedy struck the family a couple of years ago, however, her life has lacked its former lustre. The eldest Quinn daughter, Helen, is a successful Belfast lawyer, some of whose professional work involves defending young men charged with terrorism. Studious and driven in girlhood and now perceived by her family as austere, Helen was the closest of the girls to their kind and principled father. She was also the one laid lowest by his death. Sally, the youngest sister, always a frail girl growing up, has over the years become her mother's right hand, demonstrating remarkable emotional strength. She has followed in her mother and maternal grandfather's footsteps and teaches at the local primary school. It has not been easy, and in recent years she has felt compelled to escape.

This short fourteen-chapter novel is structured in an interesting manner. Odd chapters are named for the days of the week that Kate visits with her family; they focus on the present. Even chapters focus on the past: the girls' lovely outings with their father and lively paternal grandmother; the strained visits with their embittered black-clad maternal grandmother; their uncles--one, a sensitive, troubled alcoholic and the other, a jolly but worrisomely committed Republican. As the novel progresses, The Troubles increasingly encroach on the lives of the Quinn family. The older brother of a schoolmate is killed. Protestant tradesmen who used to do business with the family no longer do. The British soldiers arrive, and even pay a visit to the Quinn home--to scout out the outbuildings of the farm and inquire about dogs. Civil rights demonstrations dominate the news. Checkpoints become a fact of life.

Elegiac in tone, much of the novel focuses on the death of Charlie Quinn, the sisters' father. Madden presents a particularly moving scene that Helen remembers from childhood when she heard her father moving about downstairs and left her bed to speak to him. But the book is also forward-looking: Kate's news must be absorbed and adjusted to.

One by One in the Darkness is a beautiful novel, which, in spite of its brevity, manages to say a great deal about life in Northern Ireland in the latter part of the twentieth century. Recommended.ireland literary-fiction sisters6 s Eric104 20

It wasn't until I was over halfway through this novel that it occurred to me how definitively it had me in its grip. It sneaks up on you, perhaps because of the sliding time references of the alternating chapters but also, I'm sure, because of the patience and care with which Madden develops the characters of the three sisters. The narrative bespeaks a quiet but assured confidence, which is especially notable given that it confronts the networks of trauma and incomprehensibility of Northern Ireland's "Troubles." Despite the very particular historical coordinates, though, its observations and wisdom (about family, growing up, place, etc.) never seem purely local.4 s Becca8 2

This book is an insightful look into what it was to be a Catholic family living in Northern Ireland prior to the IRA ceasefire of 1994. "One by One in the Darkness" tells the story of three sisters. I enjoyed the character development in this story, as well as Madden's beautiful ability to write on her native Northern Ireland. 3 s John Severs35

This is the first of DM's books I have read and I loved it. Definitely a 5 for me because I could easily read it again. request-from-library2 s Carol DouglasAuthor 11 books95

This novel about a family who lived through the Troubles in Northern Ireland moved me deeply. Deirdre Madden, the author, was born in Northern Ireland, so she know whereof she speaks. She went to Trinity College in Dublin and has spent much time in the Republic of Ireland as well as the North.

The Quinn family's personal struggles and the tragic history of the Troubles are intertwined. The story is narrated by two of the three daughters, and at one point by the mother. The family home is in the country; life was idyllic when the girls were young. Then the violence escalated and spread from the cities to the countryside. The Quinns are Catholic, but they are not anti-Protestant. They watch as a relative becomes more militant.

One of the daughters becomes a lawyer who often represents people who have been charged with violent acts. Another daughter stays home and teaches in the nearby Catholic school she had attended as a child. The third has gone to London because of wider career opportunities for women, but she remains attached to her home.

There is beauty in Northern Ireland, as well as bleakness and violence. The characters in this book are greatly bothered by people who disparage it.

The setting in the era of the Troubles (the late '60s into the '90s) in no way detracts from the emphasis on the development of the characters and the problems many of them face as women. This is a wise and powerful book.1 Lou98

I appreciate the fact that this book deals with the serious topic of what was happening in Northern Ireland during the late 20th century BUT the execution wasn't mine cup of tea. Very slow-paced, confusing at times, overall quite boring. Still, I think books, such as this one, are very important but I'm not the ideal audience, I guess.classics read-in-english1 Lynda560 12

This is a wonderfully understated novel about the conflict in the North of Ireland seen through the eyes of three sisters and their traumatised mother. Beautiful lyrical descriptions of big skies and nature are juxtaposed with scenes of shocking violence. Highly recommended fiction irish woman-writer1 Ghida Aswad22 1 follower

Home. Choices. 1 Sara542

“Have you ever heard that there is nothing more important to children than what their parents have not been?”

I didn’t expect this one to blow me away the way it did, but alas. I really couldn’t stop crying towards the end; it’s been a while since I last felt a connection with a fictional character as deep and as heartbreaking as the one I felt with Helen.2022 favorites phd1 Carol532

The structure is simple. In early 1994, Cate Quinn, who works for a magazine in London, comes home to spend a week with her family near Ballymena, County Antrim, Northern Ireland; she has a secret to share. The family consists of her older sister Helen, who is a Belfast lawyer who works with people involved in terrorism and violence, and her younger sister Sally who teaches at the local school and lives with their mother, Emily. Their father was killed two years earlier, but an uncle and aunt still live close by. They are Catholic – a minority which had been marginalized second-class citizens for centuries.
Each of the main characters will be given focus in the seven chapters named for the days of that week; alternate chapters go back in time to follow the characters growing up in the 1950’s and 90’s. The adults go on civil rights marches, and their world turns dark around them. The chapters set in the past eventually catch up to current day.
At the center of the novel is the murder of their father by paramilitaries, and it is suspected that the actual target was not him, but his brother Brian.
The story plods along and takes its time being told considering it is a short book (mine was 180 pages). I found it captivating, despite the jumping around in time and the focus on each sister separately.
The women were well-developed. Emily (mom to the 3 sisters) took teacher training, but married soon after college and “wasted” her training. She transferred her own lost opportunities to her daughters. She came from an educated family, but married a humble farmer and was estranged from her own mother as a result.
I was most impressed with Chapter 9 – Mother Emily’s story includes some humor, and I would actually counsel you to read that chapter first, because it will offer much insight to the personalities of the sisters and help you understand the motivations of other characters.
Helen, the oldest daughter, has become a lawyer, is unmarried, and lives an extremely sparse and uninteresting life. Cate was always a “looker” and her Mom worried most about her. She has a successful job in London and appears to be very well-paid, offering a luxurious lifestyle for herself. Sally, the youngest, was sickly growing up, so never really left home. She became the local school teacher.
There is just enough enlightenment about the time of The Troubles to get an overview of the uncertainty of life, without dwelling on it. You get a sense of how people lived their lives surrounded by daily violence and dealing with learning that people they know have been killed in the streets.
I really enjoyed this book and would read it again someday.british historical in-my-to-read-library ...more1 Layla Bing23 1 follower

One by One in the Darkness confirmed for me a trend that I have been noticing in quite a lot of contemporary Irish fiction: namely the lack of a concrete, driving plot. The meandering pace of the narrative which skips back and forth between the characters' present and the past of their childhoods is characteristic of several other novels I've read which deal primarily with the political and religious unrest of Northern Ireland. This stylistic technique allows for the gradual revelation of information and a more thorough portrait of the devastating effects that decades of civil unrest wrought on a deeply divided country. However, it also makes for a story without a clear sense of direction, a novel without a linear plot. It reminded me a bit of Roddy Doyle's The Woman Who Walked into Doors, in the sense that they both played with the passage time and the importance and malleability of memory, and that they both used non-chronological narratives to construct the final picture via a roundabout, piecemeal route.

I can't say that this is my favorite Irish novel that I've read so far-- I'm the first to admit that I am a very plot-driven girl. I did enjoy it for its parts however. There were some great philosophical musings on the nature of childhood and how it affects our ability to have meaningful relationships later in life that really rang true to me. The characters were not particularly captivating to me in and of themselves, but together they painted a picture of the way that one act of senseless violence can affect the lives of everyone it touches. Ultimately the novel touched on themes of isolation- the way in which we can go hand in hand, but each walk alone in fear and grief-, violence, religious marginalization, and dislocation. It asked the question: how do you pick up the pieces of a life shattered by murder, by terrorism, by bigotry? And I think it found some interesting answers. I also think there was a lot that it did not explore. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the Irish Troubles. However, for a more interesting story with a livelier voice, I would recommend Eureka Street: A Novel of Ireland No Other instead.1 livros.da.sofia383 70

One by One in the Darkness follows the life of a catholic family living in Northern Ireland one week prior to the IRA ceasefire in 1994. The story alternates between past and present as 3 sisters (Hellen, Kate and Sally) recollect their childhood during 1960-70, as the Troubles are at full force.

Kate returns from London, where she works for a successful fashion magazine, to bring some disturbing news to her family. The sister's childhood is spent in a farm located an hour's drive from Derry. This distance from the city keeps much of the horrors of The Troubles at bay for a while, their only contact with them being from their visits, where they would witness the preparations for the Orange Walks: Union Jacks hung out of windows, orange arches with symbols of a compass, a set square and a ladder. However, their lives will be tainted by political violence as the civil rights march in Derry turns violent. This almost-idylic life changes when the british troops move into Northern Ireland in 1969, and the soldiers make frequent visits to the farms, asking for personal information.

The three sisters are all very different from one another.
Kate loves Ireland, but only in leaving was she able to accomplish the success she wouldnt have otherwise. She is now a sophisticated,fashionable and intelligent woman.
Helen rejects religion and becomes a lawyer in Belfast, defending terrorists even after the dreadfull events in her life.
Sally is a primary school teacher their mother, Emily. She dreams to escape Ireland but is trapped due to loyalty to her mother. The youngest and frailest daughter is the one closest to Emily, maintaining a different bound with her. All of these women are immersed in an unvironment directed by male power.

The book ultimately resumes the religious and political turmoil and its long lasting impact in the lives of normal rural families, inadvertently caught in the conflit. It was just a pity for the lack of a concrete driving plot and the very dense, condensated narrative.

for-college2 s Lisa Hough-Stewart122 6

A slow burner to start, but as the plot became more political and intense I realised this book had a hold of me. A tragic, insightful account of the impact of the Troubles on a "nornal" family in North Ireland, sending three sisters into adulthood disconnected and adrift. I feel I've learned a few things about that period of history and the book left me feeling profoundly sad. Beautifully written.already-got1 Kirsty Darbyshire1,091 57

I got hold of this because I'd loved Molly Fox's Birthday and thought this was almost but not quite as good. Will be seeking out more by the author in future.e-book1 Susannah3

Deirdre Madden's short, yet powerful novel 'One by One in the Darkness' follows the story of three sisters: Helen, Kate and Sally, who have been brought up in the Roman Catholic faith in Northern Ireland. Focusing on a week in the sisters' lives shortly before the IRA ceasefire in 1994, and after their father has been killed, the author then moves backwards and forwards in time as she relates the story of the girls' childhoods during the 1960s and 1970s. This novel, although focusing on one family, is not just their story but the story of many who live, work and love in the midst of Ireland's troubles. Helen, the eldest sister and the first of her family to go to university, becomes a solicitor specialising in terrorist cases; she lives and works in Belfast and throws herself into her work to the detriment of her personal life. Kate, the middle daughter, bright, stylish and beautiful, leaves Ireland to live and work in London as a journalist, changing the spelling of her name to Cate, in order not to sound too Irish. And then there is the youngest sister, Sally, who stays on in the family home in the country and is a strong and constant source of support to her widowed mother.

As we read of the girls' childhood years, where the author writes evocatively of the old family house and with an evident and deep affection for the Irish landscape, we are reminded of how what happens in our formative years can significantly affect the way we approach life and how we relate to people in later life. And when the story moves to events in the present day, we learn of how the three women and their mother cope with the tragic death of their beloved father and husband, and of the grief that follows; we also read of their father's brother, who is haunted by the killing and of his feelings of guilt that he should have been the one to have died. As we read on, we are shown how civil unrest and violence deeply and lastingly affect the lives of all involved; but we also see how life must go on, even after a part of one's own world has been shattered.

This is a poignant, beautifully written and quietly transforming story by a very accomplished writer. If you your stories light and prefer a linear narrative, then this may not be to your taste; but if you enjoy beautifully written stories with an emphasis more on language than plot, and where the story is gradually revealed, then this should make for a rewarding read for you. Tom M (London)164 6

If you're looking for a novel of the Troubles, this will tell you very little.

Although I was born and grew up not twenty miles from the part of Northern Ireland Deirdre Madden talks about in this novel, the people she has put in it, and their concerns, seem none of my business. For some reason she doesn't get any grip on the reader, and despite the gradually worsening background of the Troubles as they emerge, the whole novel is essentially an long introspective rumination about very private matters within one family. The only thing that really happens is that Cate, who appears to be the central character, is pregnant.

But Cate doesn't seem to care much that she's pregnant, nor does anyone else in the family. It's all very stifled. So you, the reader, don't much care either. There's nothing that engages you emotionally.

The way the novel is constructed is very confusing; you're never sure what happened when. The annoying thing about all this is that the writing is beautiful and pure, simple and intelligent, with a great attention to the description of small details. But it all blows away on the wind. Madden is considered one of the more important contemporary Irish writers of prose, and in pure literary terms her writing is full of aesthetic merit, but she lacks bite, edge, urgency. a person who can write beautifully but has no cultural intention, no purpose in why she writes, no message, I suppose I mean.

Emotionally speaking, the things she lays out before us are as flat as the big Lough Neagh that hulks in the background, all the time. Undramatic and cerebral, which is no doubt why Madden is much admired within literary circles and by intellectuals of a certain comfortable kind.
Val2,425 85

The novel follows the story of a family living in rural County Armagh, Northern Ireland. In the present of the book (it was written and published in 1996), the three sisters of the family are in their thirties; Helen is a Belfast lawyer, Kate (or Cate) works for a fashion magazine in London, while Sally is a teacher at the local school and looks after her mother. This part of the novel takes place over one week when Kate visits her family home to share important news.
In between these chapters is the story of the sisters childhood as they grew up in the 1960s and 1970s. Northern Irish Catholics had long been treated as second class citizens, unable to apply for many of the better paid jobs, but universal education made this discrimination more marked. Protests, in the form of marches for civil rights, started then. The British Army was sent, originally to be a neutral counterpoint to the biased RUC, but their presence and an incident where they opened fire on one of the marches strengthens Republican sympathies, and eventually the 'Troubles' flared. The father of the family wants nothing to do with the growing militancy and just to carry on with normal life as much as possible. One of his brothers has Republican sympathies, although his activities are confined to going on the marches, joining a political party and selling a newspaper, so he is hardly militant.
The father is murdered in the uncle's house two years before the present of the book, probably by a Unionist paramilitary group. This tragedy has devastated the family, and shown the impossibility of staying apart from the conflict at a wider level.womens-prize Khrustalyov51 6

Reading this novel was listening to my parents' memories of living through the Troubles. The overriding moral question about whether one should leave a place marred in civil conflict or stay and try to endure it - few were naïve enough to think they they could make it better - was one my parents were met with too. They did both, in a way: left and then came back (the latter out of necessity more of less). The writing about rural Northern Ireland is stronger than in other similar novels I've read - Madden has a real eye for that dual sense of openness and enclosure that exists in the small villages of Northern Ireland. This is a novel for readers who d Louise Kennedy's recent Trespasses - similar themes and questions, although Madden handles them a lot more intelligently and subtly. The split narrative between the sisters is compelling but ultimately does hold us back from a novel of greater propulsion. That said, few novels about the Troubles get this close to a woman's experience of that awful period in history. Artemis63

I don't know what to write about this book. It is not my usual read, luckily I had to read it for my class of Irish writing. It was passionate, it was kind, it was small but universal as well. I started it with no expectations, but I got slowly sucked into the universe that Madden has masterfully (re)created. I felt similar when reading Sally Rooney, I got hooked without having a real explanation for this feeling. I just know that I felt everything the family felt and that I felt smacked right into the Troubles. I felt an intense empathy and understanding, this is honestly the best thing I have read/seen about the Troubles.trinity Kristina519 2

This sat on my book shelf for 20 years before I got round to reading it. I don't think the blurb on the back helped! I was expecting something a lot more miserable than what it was. While there was an element of sadness, given it's set in N. Ireland during The Troubles, it is more about the relationship between three sister's and their mother. abby maclin28

DAMN i loved this book. i love how complex each character is, especially since the narrative focuses on mainly women and how they deal with trauma in various forms, and in various ways. i honestly wish the book was longer if only to get more development in sally’s grown-up life, but i loved it nonethelessclass Hugh Melvin94 1 follower

Hard to rate this book. Exquisite slow pace details with well executed cameos of home life in a NI family during the Troubles. Overall though it lacks pace and you know the next 30 pages are going to be very similar to the last 30 pages.
Excellent writer but. ....!straight-story Marie (UK)3,263 50

I am not sure that this is the best book about the troubles I have read. I struggled with the backwards forwards sideways motion of the narrative. I thought it could have been a lot shorter and said the same thing but i d the characterisation and overall meaning2020-reading-challenge Chris98

Really beautifully written novel about a family of 3 sisters and their family life, impacted by the death of their father. It moves between their childhood and adult life illustrating their sense of home and family, and how the Troubles impinged on them. Ellen4

Totally gorgeous. I was writing down quotes, for no reason other than they made me feel seen and loved and hurt. It's a rare thing for a book to make me envious of people who have sisters-- maybe it's this and Little Women. Eleanor Jones61

Love Deirdre Madden’s writing, the relationships between the three sisters and their mother was described beautifully. I read this as I was in Northern Ireland, and found the history really interesting, I’d very sad. I’ll be reading more from this author. Theresa488 8

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