YA fiction: Children of Lir’s Aífe tells her side of the story

When Oisin Kelly's sculpture of the Children of Lir – a work to commemorate those lost in the fight for Irish freedom – was unveiled in Dublin's Garden of Remembrance, some found it "not fitting that a subject from pagan legend … should be the basis of a public monument in a Christian country" (publicart.ie). It was a nonsensical objection, considering the legend ends in salvation through Christian baptism and the monument looks over a crucifix of water, but then again there was only one television channel in those days.

In the context of Irish mythology, the story of four children magically transformed into swans by a wicked stepmother, is not just one of the more heavily Christianised legends (some Christianising of oral stories is inevitable when the only literate people around are monks) but a proselyting Christian tale whose origins may be as late as the 14th century. From this perspective, its yoking to Irish nationalist martyrs seems almost inevitable. The story edges towards becoming sacred in its own right.

Its retellings for young people – appearing regularly – tend towards the anodyne. And yet, as Ellen O’Malley Dunlop noted while chief executive of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, the story contains so much that speaks to the darker truths of this country, particularly in its institutional abuse of women and children.

Its newest and boldest incarnation in Deirdre Sullivan's Savage Her Reply (Little Island, €17) is at first glance a follow-up to Sullivan's acclaimed fairy-tale collection Tangleweed and Brine, complete with a return of illustrator Karen Vaughan. But it is also part of an ongoing movement to reclaim and reassert Irish women's voices after silencing and mistreatment. This is a "female text" knitted from fragments and offering something richer and messier than the de Valera-approved "laughter of happy maidens".

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Sullivan’s Aífe reaches out to us to tell her side of the Lir story, an account of “a girl who spent an inordinate amount of time longing for all that I could not have [who] became a woman who wanted things”. Caught between warring men, caught up in her own suffering, she acts out and turns her stepchildren into swans. Her guilt is instant, but the deed cannot be undone.

As Aífe lives through her own exile as a demon of the air, she gathers other tales, weaving in other Irish myths and casting a sharp eye on the treatment of women. “Many men have killed their wives over the years, and in many different fashions . . . So very many women torn into shreds.”

This is a fiercely feminist novel, but it escapes being polemical partly through its lyrical prose and partly through its commitment to empathy and compassion. Aífe watches over the swans – pointedly, “the children of Aébh” – and offers up whatever fragments of help she can. She realises that even the men who have wronged her, like her foster father, have goodness in them: “If I am more than the worst thing I have ever done, then so is he.”

Sullivan’s retelling is not a Christian one, but its depiction of forgiveness is certainly in line with the New Testament. This book, intellectually pleasing and emotionally devastating, belongs on the shelves of older teenagers but should certainly not be limited to them.

Rebecca’s ancestor

The Children of Lir sculpture isn't the only Oisin Kelly work to be found around Dublin; step on to O'Connell Street to be greeted by his statue of Jim Larkin, arms aloft. Larkin's commitment to workers' rights has not been forgotten by history; the role of women in disputes such as the Dublin lockout of 1913, on the other hand, has been somewhat neglected, Rosie Hackett Bridge aside. In her latest historical novel for young people, The Boldness of Betty (O'Brien, €9.99), Anna Carey introduces readers to an ancestor – both blood and spiritual – of her contemporary heroine Rebecca.

Betty Rafferty is 14 and about to enter the workplace, despite longing to stay in school. With endearing, Adrian Mole-esque self-importance, she reflects: “I hope in the future, when I am a famous author, people will appreciate the terrible hardships I had to go through. This is another reason why I’m writing this memoir, to document my woes for posterity.”

At her new job in a cake shop, befriending girls sharing cramped tenement rooms, Betty soon learns to put her own woes in perspective, but that sense of “it could be worse” does not mean turning a blind eye to unfair treatment. As Dublin workers clash with their employers over the right to unionise, the deeply relatable Betty and her co-workers go out on strike – an experience that is at first exhilarating, then exhausting.

Carey’s lightness of touch means that descriptions of police brutality towards workers, or the hypocritical actions of Catholic pressure groups, are all the more shocking. “You can learn a lot from a story,” Betty notes, talking to – rather than down to – the young/pre-teen audience for this compelling, satisfying book.

First love

Beyond our own complicated isle, other YA titles have made their way into the world as of late. Among them the third instalment of MA Bennett's Stags series, Foxes (Hot Key, £7.99), another fiendishly page-turning exploration of secret societies and conspiracies involving Elizabethan playwrights, filtered through the eyes of a protagonist with an astute take on class and privilege.

Patrice Lawrence offers up insights into sisterhood and toxic relationships in Pieces of Silva (Hodder, £7.99). And Jennifer Niven's latest novel, Breathless (Penguin, £7.99), channels Sarah Dessen in its nuanced and thoughtful account of a summer romance, with aspiring writer Claude balancing first love (and sex) against her parents' impending divorce and the disturbing of the universe that it has provoked. This is a good season for books.