The Queen of Dirt Island

“He slowed and stopped and reached across to open the passenger door from the inside and the man sat in, a man he knew, a man whose sons were his friends, whose daughter he’d courted for a while one long summer years ago, a man he liked and respected and who smelt on this spring morning like yesterday’s drink, a smell safe and familiar, like apples windfallen and turning rotten.”

In this passage, Saoirse’s father picks up a hitchhiker he knows while returning from the hospital after Eileen gave birth. Both men are shortly about to die in a car accident, which has ripple effects through the rest of the novel, as the Aylward family becomes close many years later with the hitchhiker’s family. The smell of apples turning rotten, then, serves as a potent metaphor for the tragedy shortly about to happen.

“Oh, but look. What could be known about people in their privacies? No eyes could see beyond a closed door or into a heart.”

This passage takes place while Saoirse is still a child trying to understand the social parameters of the place she lives in. Girls, Saoirse realizes, face all sorts of rumors about their personal behavior; however, she also knows none of those rumors reflect what’s really happening on the inside. This insight will be reflected and repeated throughout the narrative, as those judging eyes and rumors turn on her when she becomes pregnant as a teenager.

“She was crying because, for the first time in her life, in this office of a woman whose job it was to protect children, she was afraid. Saoirse Aylward was fourteen years and nine months into her life before she felt fear.”

This moment represents a firm break for Saoirse from her sheltered and idyllic childhood as she enters the wider and more nuanced world of adults. After this moment, Saoirse begins to experience the judgment, rejection, and exclusion that come from pursuing her desires as a young woman.