Derry, February 1981: a close-knit bunch of teenagers are getting their kicks in the dingy Cave club, where the city’s assorted tribes experiment with illicit substances and snog to the heady sounds of post-punk, ska and dub. Liz, her brother Paddy, Orla, Sinéad, Noel and Christy are all about to take exams, leave home, get serious. Liz’s boyfriend Kevin is older, a man with a shadowy history; Orla’s Peter is a new flame.
But events beyond this haven are about to take control of the narrative. Inside the nearby Maze prison, the republican hunger strike gets under way. Outside, in streets occupied by the British army, riots are fomented. Paddy and Christy are drawn into nightly skirmishes, the hormonal rush of the action as much of a buzz as their pharmaceutical experiments. Kevin, whose youthful dissent led to disaster, runs into a face from the past who attempts to lure him back. When the strike leader, and by then Member of Parliament, Bobby Sands is read the last rites on Good Friday, the Catholic city rises. Paddy and Christy witness a friend struck down in a haze of petrol fumes and plastic bullets. Suddenly, incoherent rage finds a focus, something that can be channelled …
Though the title is reminiscent of recent punk memoirs by Viv Albertine and Cosey Fanni Tutti, none of the characters is trying to use music as a way out of a city beset by unemployment, poverty and sectarian strife. Instead, this is an examination of the tumultuous effects of recent history on the generation who came of age during the politically toxic early 80s within its most explosive terrain – for which the work of Gang of Four, Linton Kwesi Johnson, the Banshees and the Specials makes a brilliantly illustrative soundtrack. With the recent Derry Girls TV series and Milkman winning the Man Booker, Northern Ireland is experiencing a cultural resurgence.
This debut marks out Quigley as a writer of compassion and humour who wields thorough research with a deft touch. She not only demonstrates how easy it is to be swept into hot-blooded actions that have chilling repercussions, she also draws a wider picture of poverty and familial dysfunction, exploring how the stability or otherwise of an individual’s childhood affects their adult life. Her clever, multiple-narrative account of the way a community is affected by a youngster going for a night out and never coming home illustrates why the Undertones, formed in Derry, sang so passionately about normal teenage thrills.
• Music Love Drugs War is published by Fig Tree. To order a copy for £11.43 (RRP £12.99) go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
