The Troubles with Us: One Belfast Girl on Boys, Bombs and Finding Her Way

In 1990s Belfast, Alix O'Neill has experienced a variety of incidents, including burned-out buses, police mistaking her father for a terrorist, and a classmate playing hide-and-seek with her father's prosthetic hand. She and her friends are too preoccupied with their teenage girl obsessions to worry about the violence on their doorstep. The Troubles with Us is a hilarious and moving account of life in Northern Ireland during the thirty-year conflict, focusing on mothers and daughters, the fallout from unsaid things, and the lengths a girl will go to for fake tan.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 09 June 2022
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

‘The writing is full of energy and originality. Irish Times

Growing up on the Falls Road in 1990s Belfast, Alix O'Neill has seen it all – burnt-out buses blocking the route to school, the police mistaking her father for a leading terrorist, and a classmate playing hide and seek with her dad's prosthetic hand (blown off making a device for the IRA). Not that she or her friends are up to speed with the goings-on of the resistance. They're too preoccupied with the obsessions of every teenage girl – booze, boys, and Boyzone – to worry about the violence on their doorstep. Besides, the odd coffee jar bomb is nothing compared to the drama about to explode in Alix's personal life.

Desperate to leave Northern Ireland and the trials of her mother's unorthodox family – a loving yet eccentric band of misfits – behind, she makes grand plans for the next stage. But it's through these relationships and their gradual unraveling that Alix begins to appreciate not only the troubled history of where she comes from, but the strength of its women.

Warm, embarrassing, and full of love and insight, The Troubles with Us is a hilarious and moving account of the madness and mundanities of life in Northern Ireland during the thirty-year conflict. It's a story of mothers and daughters, the fallout from things left unsaid, and the lengths a girl will go to for fake tan.

Weight: 210g
Dimension: 198 x 129 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780008393748