First published in Great Britain in 2020; published by Algonquin Books on December 1, 2020
Majella O’Neill is the big girl in the title. Aghybogey in Northern Ireland is the small town. It’s a gossipy town that children who have means or scholarship-worthy smarts leave as soon as they reach adulthood. Having neither, Majella is still there, working the counter at a fish and chips takeaway. The novel follows her during a few days of her uneventful life — deadening days that are enlivened only by Majella’s snark and Michelle Gallen’s gift for capturing the essence of the villagers and the place and time in which they live.
Majella isn’t particularly happy but she makes a point of not being overly sad. People occasionally upset her but, after she calms down, she’s stoic. Her life is boring. She has the same conversations with the same people, listens to and repeats the same jokes, takes the same orders from the same customers, day after day. She relieves her boredom by sleeping as much as she can. On Sunday nights she goes the pub and drinks alone, accepting such offers to shag as might come along. She doesn’t get excited about birthdays but she’s happy to have turned 27 because she likes the number. She has a long list (with subdivisions) of things she doesn’t like and a much shorter list of things, including sex, that she does like. List entries serve as chapter subheadings. The text that follows each entry illustrates why she likes or dislikes the listed item.
Majella is widely regarded as a spinster. She lives with her mother, whose fondness for whiskey and pain pills makes Majella the family wage earner. Her father has disappeared and her Uncle Bobby is said to have blown himself up while planting a booby trap for the IRA. She works with a gossipy married man and occasionally has sex with him because why not? Majella’s sex partner choices are limited but after she learned how to masturbate, she didn’t have much use for men anyway.
Majella’s life might not be the life she wants, but she has learned to cope because she sees no alternative and she doesn’t want to become the people she dislikes. As best she can, she avoids interaction with most people and tries not to make eye contact with anyone. What Majella lacks in ambition she makes up for with attitude and unspoken opinions. She doesn’t like the new doctor because, unlike the old doctor, the new one tries to diagnose problems rather than dispensing pain pills. She has little use for the police or drunks or townspeople who express their sympathy for the loss of her recently deceased grandmother. She dislikes flirting, hypocrisy, telephone calls, nicknames, and a variety of other things. Her daily illustrations of the things she dislikes range from amusing to hilarious.
Gallen’s rendition of the local dialect (“What canna get chew?” “But sure it’s wild hard these days tae find steady work, y’know.”) is a joy to read. She captures the atmosphere of Northern Ireland and the tension between Catholics and Protestants without ever taking it on directly. That narrative decision is true to the story, as Majella accepts the world in which she lives — the border guards who bothered her father when she was young, the arrests that villagers don’t talk about, the revered Cause that she doesn’t really understand — without giving it much thought. The novel is ultimately a snapshot of a few days in Majella’s life. The focus is on Majella and, as one would expect from a snapshot, everything in the background is just a bit blurred.
The murder of an elderly woman lurks in the novel’s background, as do arrests of Majella’s neighbors and customers. Speculation about the whereabouts of Majella’s missing father and the contents of her grandmother’s will contribute to the plot. Still, Big Girl, Small Town is the kind of novel that doesn’t need an identifiable plot. Learning how Majella lives her life, watching her move from one dreary day to the next, tells a story of its own. While the last third of the novel brings some change to Majella’s life, it isn’t clear that Majella is ready for change. An epiphany on the final page suggests she might have learned something from all the episodes of Dallas she watched, but the story brings no firm resolution. Majella has a good bit of life yet to live and the reader will just have to wonder what she might make of it. She is such a sympathetic character that the reader can’t help but root for her to make a wise choice.
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