48 pages • 1 hour read
The Queen of Dirt Island
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Chapters 31-60Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 31-35 Summary
Saoirse’s mother doesn’t like Breedie and tells Saoirse to stay away from her, based on rumors from her uncle Chris. Saoirse tries to defend Breedie, but her mother says, “[T]he whole village is laughing at the pair of ye” (64). Saoirse, infuriated, tells her mother that her own brother called her a “whore,” and her mother then smacks Saoirse across the face.
Breedie calls the popular kids the Pantheon. The Pantheon now includes Breedie’s old childhood friend Melody, who has abandoned Breedie for the new group. Saoirse witnesses Breedie self-harm but refuses to do it herself when offered. Breedie tells Saoirse she loves her and reads her a poem, but Saoirse mostly sees selfishness in Breedie’s fawning and depression.
One night, Breedie and Saoirse are invited backstage at Friary Castle to meet the band. Saoirse doesn’t feel good, and when someone gives her a drink, she pours it out. Saoirse starts kissing the singer, and when he leads her to his van, she accompanies him. The two fall asleep together holding hands. Later, after she wakes, Saoirse finds a shaken and bruised Breedie, who asks why Saoirse left her. Breedie’s father picks her up, clearly angered. When Breedie doesn’t appear back in school, rumors start flying until the truth comes out: Breedie has died by suicide.
Saoirse listens to a group of boys joke about Breedie’s recent suicide. She also hears people joking about it around Oisín’s father’s barber chair. Suddenly, Saoirse misses Oisín, and when she spots him one day, she pushes him over without knowing why.
Chapters 36-40 Summary
Saoirse is pregnant. Eileen screams at her, but Saoirse claims that she can’t remember ever having sex. Saoirse’s mother then mocks her, pretending that Saoirse is claiming to be the Virgin Mary. Saoirse’s mother then threatens to kick her out of the house. Nana leaves the house for more than a week while Saoirse’s mother, refusing to cook or clean, continually upbraids her daughter. Saoirse lays in bed and eventually has a memory of the inside of the singer’s van, her own tiredness, and “the van’s door sliding open, people looking in and laughing and shutting it again” (75). Saoirse realizes that the memory implies that the singer drugged and sexually assaulted her.
Saoirse’s uncles Paudie and Chris come to the door, telling Saoirse’s mother that they want to see her and to be easy on Saoirse, as “the day is gone that a girl getting pregnant is any kind of a shame” (77). Chris then tells Saoirse’s mother that they’ll never make Saoirse feel ashamed for what happened. Eventually, Nana accepts Saoirse’s pregnancy, telling Saoirse that there’s no point living in the past. Saoirse feels confined to the house and resentful of her pregnancy. She tells her mother that the father is a singer in a band. Eileen tells her a story about a time when Saoirse was sick as a baby and Eileen took her to the doctor. As Eileen continues to tell the story, Saoirse cries out in pain from a sudden cramp.
Chapters 41-45 Summary
The three women crowd into the bathroom and discover that Saoirse is bleeding. Uncle Chris arrives and takes Saoirse and her family to the hospital. A nurse gives Saoirse an ultrasound, revealing that her baby still has a heartbeat.
One day, Saoirse’s uncle Chris gets engaged to a woman from town, Doreen. Nana is upset because she never knew about the woman and doesn’t like her from the first meeting.
Oonagh Jones, Oisín’s new girlfriend, takes the news of Saoirse’s pregnancy hard as rumors are flying that Oisín is the father. Oonagh goes to Saoirse’s estate to confront her. Saoirse’s mother goes to defend her daughter and headbutts Oonagh in the face. Saoirse’s mother pulls Oonagh to her feet and sends her home, making her promise to never confront Saoirse again. To Oonagh’s consternation, her father insists on calling the police on Saoirse’s mother. The cop, Jim Gildean, asks Saoirse’s mother to reconstruct the event and threatens to arrest both her and Oonagh. Instead of being arrested, the women shake hands and agree to let sleeping dogs lie.
Chris and Doreen have their wedding at the Church of the Holy Spirit, and Saoirse positions herself in the corner to not embarrass Nana with her pregnancy. Saoirse’s mother sits with her, criticizing the other guests, and Saoirse wonders if she’s lonely.
Chapters 46-50 Summary
Nana tells Saoirse and her mother that she will never get along with Doreen. She complains about Doreen’s personality, her presence in the house, and the sounds she makes when she and Chris make love. Saoirse’s mother says that the only solution is for Nana to come live with the two of them, and she agrees.
Saoirse’s mother wants to put an extension on their house, but she annoys Nana by saying that Chris and Paudie would do an incompetent job. Saoirse’s mother designs the extension herself, telling Saoirse that it’s for her and the baby. The next day, a man named Mickey Briars comes to construct the extension. He shows Saoirse’s mother how to lay bricks on the concrete he poured earlier. By the third week, the walls of the extension stood “stood, tied and insulated and nearly straight, the roof was on, and the neighbours to a woman [are] amazed” (98).
When Saoirse is 17 and 10 months old, she gives birth to a baby girl. After bringing her home from the hospital, the family receives a multitude of gifts from friends and neighbors. Still, the unknown father remains a topic of speculation around town. Saoirse feels as if she can’t contain her love for her baby. She wonders anxiously about all the terrible things that might happen to her. Nana and Saoirse’s mother stick around and watch the two of them, ready to help if needed. Saoirse can’t decide on a name for the child for a full week until Paudie calls her Pearl.
Chapters 51-55 Summary
One day, a car shows up at the house. It’s Sally, the daughter of the other man who was killed in the car accident with Saoirse’s father. Saoirse hasn’t seen her since the funeral on Dirt Island. Sally spends time with the family and Pearl before telling Saoirse that being a mother shouldn’t hold her back in life. Sally leaves, and Saoirse’s mother remarks that Sally always wanted a child of her own.
A friend of Nana’s, Kit Gladney, comes over, complaining about her son who has recently returned. She holds Pearl and gets the baby to burp to the delight of the family. A boy named Josh Elmwood, who Saoirse remembers as a boy whose father died in a car accident just like her own, arrives back in town with a Black girlfriend, starting gossip around town. Nana speaks to the Black woman, who is named Honey, in a condescending tone while Saoirse’s mother cringes from embarrassment and begs her to stop. When the woman speaks, they realize that she’s from London. Honey has come to Ireland with her father Syd. Honey and Syd stay for a while with Josh’s family, which upsets Nana. Saoirse wonders whether Nana has suffered a stroke because she seems confused about basic things that didn’t use to confuse her.
Paudie, who has become an important man in the IRA, gets arrested again. This time, his pictures appear on TV and in the newspapers, and Saoirse finds her house watched by police, who are investigating Paudie’s crimes. Paudie’s lawyer tells the family that he’s been arrested on suspicion of a shooting and is receiving an unfair show trial from the state.
Chapters 56-60 Summary
The police officer Jim Gildea comes to the house one day to the anger of Nana, who is still furious about how her house was torn apart when Paudie was arrested. Jim tells the family that he came by to check on them and leaves when Nana tells him to go.
Despite her earlier racism, Nana suggests asking Josh and Honey to be Pearl’s godparents. Nana and Saoirse get into a friendly squabble, and Honey tells Saoirse that she enjoys their family’s dynamic.
Josh takes a factory job, describing to Saoirse the networks of conflict that exist in his workplace. Honey and Saoirse become close, going for long walks together with Pearl, and Saoirse wonders how Honey maintains her cheerfulness so consistently. One day, Honey takes a photo of Saoirse breastfeeding Pearl and tells Saoirse how beautiful she is, warming Saoirse’s heart.
On the morning of Pearl’s first birthday, Eileen arrives home with a carful of presents and cake. A bunch of family friends attend the party, and they all watch a home film Honey has made, showing all the members of the family, including Pearl and Saoirse, happily interacting with each other.
Richard, Saoirse’s uncle who called her mother a “whore” during their visit to Dirt Island, calls her mother at work. Eileen tells Nana that Richard came into her workplace wearing a suit “like he owned the place” (121). He tells Eileen that her father is terminally ill and that he is leaving her a plot of land from the farm in his will. Richard tries to get Saoirse’s mother to sign the land over to him, but she refuses.
Chapters 31-60 Analysis
Following the detailed descriptions of Saoirse’s idyllic childhood, the second part of The Queen of Dirt Island primarily follows the dissolution of those relationships and structures, showing how The Bonds of Family can break as well as strengthen. Saoirse’s rebellion with Breedie takes the form of seeing local bands and boys without supervision; Eileen’s reaction stems from her own experiences, as she was mistreated by her family for behaving similarly in her youth. Breedie’s death represents the consequences of such rejection. Like Saoirse, Breedie is sexually assaulted, but Breedie’s authoritarian father treats her with anger, contrasting with Eileen and Nana, who eventually forgive Saoirse. Breedie, rejected at both home and school, dies by suicide. Saoirse’s path through life, at this point, has two competing models: that of her mother, who rose to overcome the social rejection she faced, and that of Breedie, whose death was influenced by social rejection. The path that Saoirse chooses throughout the rest of the book derives heavily from the environment in which she’s been placed.
As she grows, Saoirse is initially motivated by a desire for independence and to escape from her provincial life, but her shifting priorities indicate her character growth following the birth of her daughter. In disobeying her family to see the band with Breedie, Saoirse gains a taste of the independent life. However, she also quickly learns lessons about the dangers that sort of independence can bring, embodied by Breedie’s death and Oonagh’s antagonism. Pearl’s birth at first represents an impediment to Saoirse’s increasing independence, locking Saoirse at home to take care of her daughter when she would otherwise be leaving for university. However, Saoirse’s motivations begin to shift during this section; instead of desiring independence for herself, her priorities shift to ensuring a happy future for Pearl. Her maturing values are reflected, recontextualized, and reinterpreted throughout the rest of the narrative in a variety of ways.
This section also introduces two characters who become very important in Saoirse’s coming-of-age: Josh and Honey. Honey serves as a foil for Saoirse, with many of her character traits contrasting with Saoirse, including her education, her artistic impulses, and her independence. Josh, on the other hand, is a local boy, and his relationship with Honey represents an escape from a sheltered existence. Saoirse comes to understand that she feels jealous of Josh and Honey as a unit—she’s jealous of their relationship, which, to her, represents a cosmopolitan and artistic freedom—rather than jealousy toward either of them in particular. Honey is further “othered” in the narrative by being the only Black person in their small Irish town, and throughout the book, she faces ignorant and racist comments from the Irish locals—another dimension of the theme of Women in Society. However, to Saoirse, Honey’s outsider status makes her more attractive as a potential friend and role model for the future.
Finally, Saoirse learns more about her uncle Richard, who comes to represent normalized violence and familial rejection. Earlier in the novel, Richard treated Saoirse with disrespect and insulted Eileen at her mother’s funeral. Richard, who has spent years merely ignoring his sister and niece, now gains a reason to interact with them in the form of Eileen’s inheritance of the land. Richard represents the social judgment that has plagued each generation of Aylward women—in this case, The Bonds of Family are not enough to overcome the judgments associated with women denying their social roles. When Eileen refuses Richard’s request to sell him the land, he becomes increasingly enraged, which foreshadows his eventual physical violence toward Eileen. His reaction also demonstrates to Saoirse the consequences of social rejection in the form of personal violence from a close family member. A lesson that both Eileen and Saoirse internalize is that the only people who can be relied on are those who have demonstrated they care more about family than reputation. In contrast, Richard embodies socialized violence and entitlement and disregards the Bonds of Family.
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