The Troubles With Us Alix O’Neill 4th Estate, €14.99

When Alix O’Neill, author of the hilarious and moving memoir The Troubles With Us, saw Derry Girls on TV for the first time, something ignited inside her. Seeing her experiences of growing up during the Troubles reflected back at her from the screen inspired her to write a memoir of her own teenage years in the 1990s Belfast. Interwoven with anecdotes of adolescent escapades, delivered with dead-pan humour, is the moving story of her mother and her sprawling, messy family, their secrets and complex relationships.

“The Great Santa Conspiracy taught me two important life lessons: being a grown-up can be messy, and parents have secrets too.” 

This memoir is the great unfurling of those family secrets, as well as a funny, brave coming-of-age tale.

All this is set against the backdrop of very real political and societal turmoil. She recollects incidents of shootings, coffee-jar bombs, prosthetic limbs, and the signing of the Good Friday Agreement – but for the most part, she doesn’t linger on the bloody history of Northern Ireland. Growing up on the staunchly Catholic Falls Road gave her a front-row seat to all that ‘madness’.

But there were more immediate dramas to attend to, such as schoolgirl friendships, fake tan, sneaking off to the pub, and snogging boys.

“We couldn’t let stuff like that bother us… we were teenagers…There was no room in our under-eveloped brains to contemplate life beyond boys, booze and Boyzone.”

For those readers unfamiliar with the intricacies of the conflict, she gives a hilarious summary of the religious differences between the two communities. Catholics believe in Mary, ‘She-Who-Gave-Birth-Without-Doing-The-Deed’, and confession, which is ‘free therapy’ that allows you to misbehave. Protestants, on the other hand, prefer ‘faith without frills’, wrap their toasters in clingfilm and have no need of confession “as they never do anything they need to feel guilty about”. 

But as ever in Northern Ireland, nothing is as clear-cut as that, because the youngsters leave their differences at the door of The Cres, a pub in the heartland of Loyalist Belfast.

“Local kids and affluent Protestants and Catholics from the suburbs got drunk together, we retched together, squeezed one another’s body parts on the dance floor.”

Full of wit and warmth, this brilliant memoir of resilience and humour is a total joy.