Michelle Gallen grew up in Northern Ireland’s 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’s 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’Neill and Caroline Jackson—and a gaggle of Protestants. It’s the first time in their lives that the girls have spent time with “the other side” (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—and costing—Maeve more than she imagined.
Go beyond the episode:
- Michelle Gallen’s Factory Girls
- Listen to Nicola Coughlan read Gallen’s debut novel Big Girl, Small Town
- We do love Derry Girls, too
- In 1993, Dolores O’Riordan wrote the most heartbreaking song about the Troubles: “Zombie,” which the Cranberries released in 1994 after the first ceasefire
- There are dozens of books about the Troubles—we recommend starting with Richard English’s Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA
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