Michelle Gallen

A funny, fierce, and unforgettable read about a young woman working a summer job in a shirt factory in Northern Ireland, while tensions rise both inside and outside the factory walls.

It’s the summer of 1994, and all smart-mouthed Maeve Murray wants are good final exam results so she can earn her ticket out of the wee Northern Irish town she has grown up in during the Troubles. She hopes she will soon be in London studying journalism—away from her crowded home, the silence and sadness surrounding her sister’s death, and most of all, away from the violence of her divided community.

As a first step, Maeve’s taken a job in a shirt factory working alongside Protestants with her best friends. But getting the right exam results is only part of Maeve’s problem—she’s got to survive a tit-for-tat paramilitary campaign, iron 100 shirts an hour all day every day, and deal with the attentions of Handy Andy Strawbridge, her slick and untrustworthy English boss. Then, as the British loyalist marching season raises tensions among the Catholic and Protestant workforce, Maeve realizes something is going on behind the scenes at the factory. What seems to be a great opportunity to earn money turns out to be a crucible in which Maeve faces the test of a lifetime. Seeking justice for herself and her fellow workers may just be Maeve’s one-way ticket out of town.

Bitingly hilarious, clear-eyed, and steeped in the vernacular of its time and place, ‘Factory Girls’ tackles questions of wealth and power, religion and nationalism, and how young women maintain hope for themselves and the future during divided, violent times.

Factory Girls

ayoni

Maeve realised later that evening that she was bored of everything and everyone—herself included. And being bored of herself felt much worse than being broke, or feeling trapped, or having your whole heart blister over with grief. 

And in the heel of the hunt, even if Andy had been through proper shit, he was a man. No matter how shitty things got for a man, they were always shittier for a woman. 

Sometimes she felt like she was a female version of Icarus, spending hours collecting feathers, sticking them into wodges of hot wax to make the wings she needed to escape. Only instead of helping her, like Icarus’ da did, her mam kept picking at the wings, plucking the feathers out the way healthy hens peck at a sick bird.

Factory Girls quotes

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