The Queen of Dirt Island

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses self-harm, suicide, and racist, sexist, and anti-gay language.

A man drives home with his newborn daughter and wife, promising to himself to always care for them. They stop to pick up a hitchhiker, a religious man whom the new father knows. However, both men are killed in a car accident directly after.

In the girl’s earliest memory, she’s four or five and standing under blossoms falling from a tree. Her mother, Eileen, denies the memory’s truthfulness, but the girl knows it is real. The girl’s name is Saoirse, which her mother dislikes as non-Irish speakers won’t know how to pronounce it. Eileen’s mother-in-law and Saoirse’s grandmother declares, “We had no choice but to call her that good name. After all the battles our people fought along the years against the English to be free” (6). Saoirse wonders about her father. The other families living in the estate (housing development) have fathers, and Saoirse notices them leaving for work every morning.

One morning, Saoirse overhears her grandmother, Nana, and her mother discussing a letter her mother received from her brother. While the specific contents of the letter are never revealed, the women perceive the letter as abusive and selfish.