Imprint
- John Murray
- John Murray
- John Murray
Ireland, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
The second novel from the Costa Prize shortlisted author of Big Girl, Small Town, Factory Girls is 'the perfect pick for those missing their dose of Derry Girls' (Irish Examiner)
'The perfect pick for those missing their dose of Derry Girls' Irish Examiner
'Entertaining, touching and savagely funny' Sunday Times
'Vital, bang-on, and seriously funny' Roddy Doyle
It's the summer of 1994, and all Maeve Murray wants is some money and good exam results so she can escape her shitty wee town in Northern Ireland.
Over the holidays, Maeve bags herself a job at the local shirt factory with her best friends Caroline and Aoife. It's set to be the summer of their lives, but first she's got to survive a tit-for-tat paramilitary campaign as brutal as her relationship with her mam, iron 800 shirts a day to keep her job and dodge the attentions of Handy Andy Strawbridge, her slimy English boss. And when she starts to notice things aren't adding up at the factory, it seems like revealing the truth may just be her one-way ticket out of town.
More books by Michelle Gallen
Praise for Factory Girls: WINNER OF THE COMEDY WOMEN IN PRINT PRIZE
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Full of the stuff that we're starting to expect of Michelle Gallen; wild, hilariously angry characters, and language that is vital, bang-on, and seriously funny - Roddy Doyle
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Highly entertaining . . . crackles with good one-liners . . . yet this earthy comedy also has telling things to say about violence and division - Independent, Books of the Month
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A cracking follow-up - at times savagely funny, but with a loamy undertow of complex feeling . . . Fans of the contemporary Irish authors Lisa McInerney and Louise Kennedy should enjoy it too. - Sunday Times, best popular fiction books of 2022
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Original and compelling . . . Gallen's comic, insightful novel . . . shares brilliantly the tangled stories of young women in a struggling provincial town . . . Factory Girls brings a hidden generation of young women to the literary stage, and does so in a flurry of "thons" and "skitters". - Irish Times
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If the cast of Derry Girls worked in a shirtmaking factory . . . There's a lot of laugh-out-loud humour . . . but at its heart it's an emotional read - Belfast Telegraph
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Gallen's pen draws blood with the sharpness of her observations, rendering a fresh and acutely more complex portrait of Northern Ireland through Maeve's eyes . . . Brilliantly, wickedly funny and soul-crushingly sad, Gallen has written the Vienetta of books this summer - Irish Independent
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Darkly comic - Daily Mail
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One of the most entertaining, engagingly written summer reads you will lay your hands on - Sunday Life Magazine
Michelle Gallen
Michelle Gallen was born in Tyrone in the 1970s and grew up during the Troubles a few miles from the border. She studied English Literature at Trinity College Dublin. Her first novel, Big Girl, Small Town, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, the Comedy Women in Print Prize, Newcomer of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and the Kate O'Brien Award. It was longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize.
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