Louise Kennedy grew up a few miles from Belfast in Northern Ireland. The population here is divided between unionists, who wish to see Northern Ireland continue as part of the United Kingdom, and nationalists, who wish to see Northern Ireland unified with the Republic of Ireland, independent of the United Kingdom.
Nationalists are overwhelmingly Catholic and long years of discrimination under the Stormont government (1921–72) led to the civil rights movement in the 1960s. It was not just religious or political bigotry, but also the result of more complex socio-economic, socio-political and geographical factors. These were major contributing factors to the Troubles. The political unrest went through its most violent phase between 1968 and 1994.
Kennedy writes evocatively about the effects of these three difficult decades on young people in her novels, Trespasses and Stations. While Trespasses addressed the fallouts of this conflict, Stations examines what remains when such a conflict is “over”. Together, the two novels offer a rather comprehensive picture of modern Irish identity and its various social problems.
Kennedy’s first book, a short-story collection called The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac, was published in 2021 when she was 55. It won the John McGahern Prize. In a conversation with Scroll, Kennedy spoke about Ireland’s literary heritage, the nation’s troubled relationship…
