In praise of Mia Gallagher, by Anne Gildea

Irish Women Writers: ‘Mia is the real deal, one history will remember’


My love does be the comedy, but in the odd absence of an Irish female Flann O’Brien, my nod goes to the authoress of a 666-page lump of a novel. Published in 2006, Hellfire is the relentless inner monologue of protagonist Lucy Dolan, inner-city junkie, just out of prison, retelling the story of herself to make sense of her raddled journey from womb to now. The Dublin it evokes is a dirty gothic heroin- and poverty-addled pit, webbed over with multiple sorry stories, streaked through with sinister myth.

So thrillingly unputdownable is this debut novel, that someone picked up my copy a few years back, and I haven’t seen it since, but the moon as a “smudged penny” and the candle-lit shadows of junkies on a derelict stairwell, flaring up like massive-winged black angels, are a couple of Mia Gallagher’s myriad vivid images that have stuck in the bonce since.

Hellfire’s follow-up? I hear it’s huge, that it’s with publishers. I’ll be on the Kindle as soon as it’s out. Mia is the real deal, one history will remember.

Other favourites: Eimear MacBride and Marina Carr

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Anne Gildea is a writer, actor, comedian and co-founder of The Nualas. Her books are Deadlines and Dickheads and I’ve Got Cancer, What’s Your Excuse?