Good Trouble by Forest Issac Jones - Spotlight and Blog Tour

Hello and welcome to my stop on the tour for Good Trouble by Forest Issac Jones. Thank you so much for having me along. Please do click around and look at some of my other posts. I was so intrigued by the premise of this book but I'm really sad that I ran out of time to read it before this post was due. I do still plan on reading it. The issue of civil rights and civil freedoms is something that I am really interested in, especially the history of Northern Ireland and associated fights. 

My partner and I visited Northern Ireland a couple of years ago and we went to the Museum of Free Derry. It is amazing and I highly recommend it if you're in the area. It is simultaneously one of the most depressing and one of the most uplifting places I've ever been. Depressing because of the sheer scale of human misery inflicted upon the Catholics of Northern Ireland - especially on Bloody Sunday, which features heavily and which was so interesting to learn a lot about - but uplifting because of the power of people. The people who will fight for their rights and who will come together to make a movement. There is mention in the museum of the Black Civil Rights Movement and how there was support on both sides. So this book was really ideal for me and I will most likely read it on holiday. 

Let me show some of my photos of Derry and some of the murals. When we were there we saw a lot of Free Palestine graffiti and Palestinian flags, which was amazing too. All these photos are copyrighted to me and may not be copied or used elsewhere. 

This is the blurb for this book: 

Good Trouble will show the strong connection between the Black Civil Rights Movement in the United States and the Catholic Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland – specifically the influence of the Montgomery to Selma march on the 1969 Belfast to Derry march through oral history, based on numerous interviews of events leading up to both marches and afterwards. This is close to the author’s heart as both of his parents marched to integrate lunch counters and movie theatres in Salisbury, North Carolina, in 1963 as college students. His mother was at the 1963 March to Washington where Martin Luther King gave his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.

Award winning author Julieann Campbell (On Bloody Sunday) wrote the introduction for Good Trouble, looking back at her times growing up in Derry, in the heart of the Catholic Civil Rights Movement. Jones travelled to Dublin, Belfast and Derry to conduct interviews for the book. In all, he did fifteen interviews with people who were involved in the movement in Northern Ireland (including Billy McVeigh – featured in the BAFTA winning documentary, Once Upon A Time In Northern Ireland) and in the United States (including Richard Smiley and Dr. Sheyann Webb-Christburg – both were at Bloody Sunday in Alabama and on the Selma to Montgomery march among others). Jones was also able to talk with Eamonn McCann (he took part in the Belfast to Derry march in 1969; he was the John Lewis of Northern Ireland).

Unlike most books on Northern Ireland, this goes into detail about the connection and the influence between the two movements. Also, most focus on Bloody Sunday and not the pivotal incidents at Burntollet Bridge and the Battle of the Bogside. Building off of unprecedented access and interviews with participants in both movements, Jones crafts a gripping and moving account of these pivotal years for both countries.

Before My Actual Heart Breaks by Tish Delaney - Review

I stayed in Ireland for my next read after Sally Rooney, picking up this, which my friend Laura bought me for my birthday. She had recently read it and loved it and thought I would too. And she was right, I did! 

It's set mostly in the mid eighties in County Tyrone, in a fictional town near Omagh. At the beginning of the novel, it's much later in time, and we meet Mary, then in her forties, who has five children and has "lost" her husband. It's not clear what has happened to him until the very end of the book, but all the way through I wondered whether the book would have a happy ending or not. 

Mary Rattigan is the youngest of a family of seven children. Her parents have a farm in the countryside. Her mother, Sadie, is cold and abusive, often telling Mary how useless she is and often abusing her physically. The farm is scant in comfort - some kittens are drowned so that the children can't form bonds with them - and Mary's only sister Kathleen leaves, leaving Mary heartbroken. She has a friend called Lizzy; the two of them are close. She has a boyfriend called Joe, the son of the local doctor. On a school trip, however, Mary loses her virginity to someone else and subsequently falls pregnant. Everyone assumes the baby is Joe's - he is sent off to America. Mary imagines she will give the baby to her aunt Eileen, but then John Johns, from the neighbouring farm, offers to marry her.

John is the illegitimate son of a Catholic priest and lives with his mother Bridie, who has been a mother figure to Mary throughout her life. Mary moves into the Lower Room of their farmhouse where she later has her baby. She and Bridie are close but John remains closed off to her. They don't consumate their marriageb until Serena is five and John has worked in England for a year to earn some money to update the farmhouse. Until now it has had no running water, no inside toilet, and no electricity. With the updates, Mary and John have to share a room for the first time, and have four sons in quick succession.

The whole book is like a family saga. It's easy to be very sympathetic towards Mary and the situation she finds herself in, and how much she grows to love John but can't quite get herself to admit it. I liked that the book was set in The Troubles and how that impacted everyone's daily life, and also how Mary speaks of dreading losing her sons to the violence. I loved John, you understand why he is like he is too. I liked Bridie and the farmhouse and the small comforts Mary finds. I really loved the book and I'm glad Laura bought it for me!

I sent it to my mother in law because I think she'll really enjoy it and she likes it when I recommend books to her (the last thing I bought her was Shuggie Bain, which she loved)

Little Girl Lost by Brian McGilloway - Review

I requested this book at the library a couple of months ago, and it came in in mid October so I picked it up soon after. I was intrigued by the fact that the book is set in Derry in Northern Ireland, as I haven't read much set there and I thought it would be interesting to read a police procedural set there. I was right, it was - there was plenty of history around the Troubles and how they were impacting upon life today . The book was published 11 years ago and is set in 2009.

Lucy Black is a detective constable and has recently moved back to Derry to look after her dad, who has dementia and keeps getting her confused with someone called Janet. Lucy and her parents, both police officers, lived in Derry when Lucy was small, but after their house was set alight they moved to Antrim. Lucy is estranged from her mother, but her mother is also Assistant Chief Constable in the Derry police. She is divorced from Lucy's dad and Lucy thinks that almost no one knows who her mother is amongst her new colleagues. 

It's winter and snowing heavily when Lucy gets a call one morning to say that a child has been found in nearby woods. There is a sixteen year old called Kate McLaughlin missing and Lucy hopes this is the child. But this kid is much younger - around eight or nine. She is rescued but doesn't say anything, so police and social workers aren't sure where she belongs. She forms a bit of an attachment to Lucy, who keeps visiting her. It is found that she's covered in blood, but again, no one is sure who that belongs to.

Lucy is moved out of CID to the Public Protection Unit, under a man called Fleming. She is working on finding Alice's family when she realises that the case might be linked to Kate McLaughlin. Kate's father, Michael, owns some land on Derry's dockside that is supposedly worth a lot of money, so the case is assumed to be a kidnapping, but no ransom demand has been made. Lucy steps on some toes to try to get to the bottom of what has happened to both girls. 

Her dad is getting more ill. He's been going through his old police notebooks and keeps talking about Janet. Lucy wants to find out the truth here, too.

This is the first Lucy Black book and I would read more, I liked it and Lucy and the setting. I liked the police corruption portrayed too. I'm giving this four out of five. 

Erin's Diary by Lisa McGee - Review

You may know that I'm a huge fan of the sitcom Derry Girls, I have been ever since it started and I can't wait for Season 3, although I know filming has been stalled thanks to Covid, but let's hope that at some point we get it. I was a teenager in the late 90s so I loved the universal stuff that was present, and the Derry setting is perfect. I've been lucky enough to go to Derry twice, and it's an absolutely beautiful city that I would recommend. 

I saw this book on Nicola Coughlan's Twitter, so when my sister in law asked me what I would like for Christmas I mentioned this. It's written by Lisa McGee, who wrote Derry Girls and also the sitcom London Irish, which stars Derry Girls' Father Patrick as the main character. 

It is Erin's diary, and it takes place over the course of the two series of the programme, including everything that happens within the twelve episodes of the show. So I knew what was going to come up, but we get funny little asides from Erin. Like all teenagers, she's totally self obsessed. She's also convinced she's a brilliant writer, and thinks that her memoirs will be famous one day. 

There's also bits popped in from the rest of the gang and the rest of the family, meaning this is a bright and well designed book which is fun to read. I enjoyed it; you'll like it if you like Derry Girls, I'm sure! I'm giving it four out of five. 

Big Girl Small Town by Michelle Gallen

I saw this book while browsing Netgalley and was intrigued by the premise. I was granted access, and then I saw Nicola Coughlan, who plays Clare in Derry Girls, say that she was narrating the audiobook. I immediately put the book to the top of my mental to read list, and picked this up in the middle of January. I was away for my birthday and find it easier to read on my tablet while away on holiday.

The book is set in the early noughties and is about a young woman called Majella, who lives in a small town on the Northern Irish border with her ma, Nuala. Majella is clearly autistic, although not, as it's mentioned, diagnosed as such. She works in the chip shop in the small town, six days a week, alongside Marty. She gets free food when the shop shuts, she goes home, eats her food, deals with her drunken mother, and goes to bed. She and Marty sometimes have sex. She has lists of bad things - small talk, the flickering light in the shop - and lists of good things. She treats herself to a new duvet.

Her da disappeared quite a few years ago when Majella was a child, after the death of her uncle Bobby. Bobby was an IRA member and her dad never recovered, so disappeared. Her grandma lives on a farm up by the border, but at the beginning of the book she's been murdered. The book is in no way linear so we don't get really the story of what happened to her grandma, but we do understand how Majella feels about it and about her grandma.

Her mum is clearly an alcoholic and there's lots of stuff around this, which may be triggering for some readers. Majella doesn't seem to cope very well. She very much seems autistic and flicks her fingers and rocks as coping mechanisms. There's some sexual content and some graphic violence too.

I wouldn't say Majella is an altogether likeable character, but I did like her. I felt like I understood her, and I felt like she was sympathetic in her cloistered, claustrophobic life. The non-linear structure means that there were loads of things that I wanted to know still at the end of the book, but I quite liked that.

The styling of the novel is a bit odd and took me a while to get into. There's no speech marks, which will get it compared to Normal People by Sally Rooney, I'm sure, but speech is set out enough for you to understand who is speaking. There's also names not capitalised, and other words capitalised for apparently no reason, but I liked this and thought it added to who Majella is as a person. The book will be compared to Milkman by Anna Burns, which I personally truggled to get into, but I guess the comparison is fair especially given the subject matter and setting.

I'm giving this book four out of five - I really enjoyed it and am glad I read it! I hope the author does some more fantastic things in the future.

Big Girl Small Town is published by John Murray Press, so many thanks to them for granting me access to this book and giving me the chance to review it. The book will be published on the 20th of February 2020. I was given an ecopy of this book for review, but was not otherwise compensated. All thoughts and opinions are my own.