First published in Great Britain in 2022; published by Algonquin Books on November 29, 2022
Factory Girls takes place in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. The background of religious and political division balances the novel’s humor. The story is also infused with biting commentary on the role of gender and class in the UK. While those serious themes evolve until they give weight to a simple story, the bright and opinionated protagonist assures the reader of a serious laugh on nearly every page.
Maeve Murray is a Catholic who grew up with the Troubles. She isn’t as affected by bombings and deaths as members of her parents’ generation; they seem a normal part of her life. But when news reports exaggerate the harm caused by an IRA bomb that a local had dismantled before the bomb squad arrived to set it off, Maeve decides to become a journalist. She’s tired of slanted media coverage and wants to bring a perspective of truth to the news — not that she expects to be assigned to serious news coverage, given her gender.
Maeve has taken her A-levels and has been accepted into University College in London if the results meet the university’s standards. She won’t know until mid-August. To earn some money and pass the time, she spends the summer working at the local shirt factory with her two best friends, Caroline and Aoife. Her job is to iron shirts.
Initially, the plot follows Maeve as she drinks with her friends after work and lusts after the few attractive men in her life. She writes off most of the men she sees in the pub because they have entered their thirties and are “fat and filthy.” Although she despises the man, she feels a pleasant physical response whenever she sees the factory owner, Andy Strawbridge. Andy drives a Jag and has a reputation for giving lifts home to factory girls so he can “park up some lonely lane” and get blown by his girl of choice.
Strawbridge has taken a development grant after promising to employ both Protestants and Catholics. His factory is non-union and his pay is predictably substandard, for which he blames cheap labor in less developed countries. Some of the factory workers, including Maeve, decide to investigate Strawbridge’s business operation. They don’t like what they find.
Maeve is also suspicious of the factory’s ability to unify a divided city. By the novel’s end, Maeve is disgusted with attempts to bring unity that are nothing but showmanship. Catholics and Protestants on the same quiz team need to be driven to the quiz by armed British escorts. Armed guards also transport a choir that sings songs of peace. Maeve comes to believe that covering the divisions with pretty wallpaper won’t end the bombings. She wants to get religion out of schools, to integrate schools and neighborhoods and the police, but effective solutions are more difficult than singing “Imagine” to students who have been raised to hate practitioners of a religion they do not share.
Maeve’s suspicion that Strawbridge is not to be trusted underlies the plot. Most of the story, however, is devoted to Maeve’s observations of life and interactions with her two friends. Aoife’s parents are more affluent than the other families Maeve knows, and Aoife is grateful that Maeve doesn’t hold her social class against her. Caroline is nearly as bright as Maeve and Aoife but less ambitious. She doesn’t know whether she wants to leave a hometown that will only prove to be a dead end if she stays.
Maeve has been reading Dale Carnegie to learn how to get along with co-workers but being artificial isn’t in her nature. Her feisty personality accounts for most of the novel’s humor. Maeve’s Northern Irish voice is wonderful. Here she describes a recently opened coffee shop: “McHugh’s Brews was bunged with wee women murmuring over an iced bun and tearing the arse out of a pot of tea.” On Aoife’s innocence: “If Aoife fell into a barrel of cocks she’d come out sucking her own thumb.” On generational differences: “Her mam’s generation had been mad for civil rights and the marching before the TV mast had boosted its signal and the improved reception settled their heads.”
Maeve is astonished to discover that the religious differences between Catholics and Protestants are slight (a couple of words in a prayer, slightly different church rituals) yet the differences lead to segregation, unequal opportunities, and violence. Maeve marvels that Protestant and Catholic women alike are treated as insignificant servants by the men who make all the decisions, even when all their decisions are wrong. She wonders at the national condemnation of abortion when everyone knows that women who can raise the money go to England and return relieved of their pregnancies while the men who knocked them up pretend that nothing ever happened.
The ending resolves the main plot threads and offers some clues as to what the future might hold for the three girls. Of course, the Troubles won’t be (partially) resolved for a few more years, while the cultural issues that depress Maeve will not likely be resolved in her generation. The novel’s ending is nevertheless as happy as it can be while remaining honest. If Michelle Gallen decides to check in on Maeve ten years from now, I’d stand in line to pick up the book.
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