Factory Girls by Michelle Gallen
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I set myself a personal reading challenge to read and review all eight novels on the shortlist for the Comedy Women in Print Prize 2023.
Factory Girls describes the adventures of three Catholic girls during the summer after they leave school. It is set in 1994 in a Northern Ireland country town. The story of their holiday jobs in a shirt factory is told in third person from the point of view of Maeve Murray, who is desperate to escape to a journalism course in London. Seen through the eyes of intelligent but unsophisticated Maeve, life in a small town where everybody knows you is about avoiding hostilities - personal, social or paramilitary. She also has to watch out for predators like seductive Andy Strawbridge, the factory manager.
Michelle Gallen brings Maeve and her friends to life with sparkling wit and colloquial humour. Tough Catholic machinist Fidelma Hegarty is ‘famous for her sour puss and brawling’, while Billy Stone the fabric cutter has Loyalist tattoos and ‘his left hand hidden in what looked like a chain-mail glove’. This is a clever reference to the bloodstained legend of the Red Hand of Ulster. When Maeve realises that for the first time in her life she will be sharing a space with Protestants, her unease is palpable. She has grown up in a divided society and developed a sixth sense for danger. To quote one of Gallen’s many brilliant lines, ‘Maeve had sandbags in her belly’.
I am from a Protestant family in Northern Ireland, so Factory Girls is a mirror image of my own teenage years. I laughed out loud at the discussion of whether to hold the factory social at Kelly’s pub (Catholic) or Cromwell’s (Protestant). My ‘Planter’ heritage has its roots in the time of Oliver Cromwell, so I never spoke to a Catholic socially until I joined the Lyric Theatre drama school at the age of sixteen. Michelle Gallen has done a witty and wonderful job of illustrating the realities of growing up in Northern Ireland, and highlighting the depth of the division between our communities.
The winner of the Comedy Women in Print Prize will be announced on 17th April. Follow the link below for more details.