Although these texts were published during an ostensibly ‘post-conflict’ moment, recurrent trauma linked to the Troubles manifests in the form of magical realist narrative elements such as surrealist, fantastic, and phantasmal events and characters. Cillian McGrattan argues that in Northern Ireland, ‘the political dimension of trauma’ includes ‘fundamental democratic and governance problems…having to do with a loss of voice the perpetration of violence…and the feeling of being betrayed by those in power’ ( 2017: 1). The magical realist stories covered here emerged in response to the retraumatising structures of post-Agreement society. 1 After the Agreement, women’s writing methods have shifted to include increasingly experimentalist forms. Their work has flourished in the post-Agreement period, owing to an increased number of literary platforms for and recent anthologies of literature by Northern women. This revived magical realist trend is part of a larger movement of new writing by women from the region. The past five years have witnessed an efflorescence of magical realist fiction by women authors from Northern Ireland.
These writers utilise the magical realist mode as a means to challenge received narratives about Northern Ireland and to engage with the memory of trauma, which has been sublimated by the progressivist discourse of the Agreement. They examine the impact of this transmission on the family unit – particularly upon younger generations – and contemplate the nature of the society that they will inherit. Their stories investigate the transgenerational memory of trauma and the ‘legacy’ of the conflict and consider the ways in which these are transmitted. This study analyses work by Jan Carson, Bernie McGill, and Roisín O’Donnell, authors whose magical realist texts address the ‘living ghosts’ of the Troubles.
The dialectical structure of magical realism makes this mode well-suited to post-Agreement, ‘post-conflict’ literature, which ricochets back and forth across the ‘post-’ marker in order to explore how the past impinges upon the present.
This essay considers the ways in which the magical realist mode is useful to women writers within the context of contemporary Northern Irish culture. The post-Good Friday/Belfast Agreement period has witnessed an efflorescence of magical realist fiction by Northern Irish women authors.
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