It’s these strong-willed, stubborn women that bring Saoirse up in the world, and Nana in particular who guides her on her way, as we follow her trials and tribulations growing up.

They are women who do things their own way, and don’t apologise for it Ryan conjures a vivid picture of Eileen, as a woman who smokes, wears sunglasses and wears her hair long, setting her apart from her peers of the time while Nana is sharply opinionated, equal parts wisecracks and wisdom. In Saoirse, her mother Eileen, and her paternal grandmother Mary (Nana), Ryan has created formidable and joyous characters, the two older women in particular. These are women who have known heartbreak, tragedy and judgement, and yet they love so fiercely, fight on in life, and hold each other up and it’s this bustling household, full of shouting and cursing but also laughter, and brimming with love, which lies at the heart of this story. If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue today or give a gift subscription to a friend or family member.You can also purchase one-off issues from The Big Issue Shop or The Big Issue app, available now from the App Store or Google Play.The Queen of Dirt Island by Donal Ryan is a tender and poignant multigenerational story about the Aylward women from a small, rural village in Co. This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine. You can buy The Queen of Dirt Island from The Big Issue shop on, which helps to support The Big Issue and independent bookshops.

Patrick Maxwell is a writer and journalist There is a real vein of self-pity throughout this novel: Republican terrorists are treated as victims and disaster is piled on affected disaster to make it seem realistic. It is almost an affecting novel, yet it seems made too much of effects, of endearing phrases and a placid obscurity of time and place.

The Queen of Dirt Island takes us to rural Ireland and the enveloping disgraces and disasters of Saoirse Aylward as she grows up without a father and a religious ethic doomed to corruption by the farmers and schoolboys all around her. Donal Ryan may explain the trend: his laconic prose, the episodic structure, the pastoral descriptions, the constant sources of tragedy and the silent, morose central characters through whose tinted lens we get a glimpse of their world. Something is going on in Irish fiction which has beguiled and enchanted British readers over the last decade. The Queen of Dirt Island by Donal Ryan is out on August 18 (Doubleday, £14.99)