Few things can turn an abstract conflict halfway across the world into reality than to see it through the eyes of a child growing up in the middle of it. That's really the strength of this book about Amelia, a Belfast girl who is seven when the "Troubles" kick off in 1969. Most readers will be comparing their own (comparably) sheltered and secure childhoods to that of Amelia's, who collects plastic bullets, sees a friend shoot another girl on the playground, and grows up in an area under military occupation, where IRA thugs dole out kneecappings, and being in the wrong place in the wrong time can get you very dead.

The clear central theme is that growing up in such an environment is scarring-and as one reads Amelia's story, it's not hard to think of children from El Salvador, Palestine, Algeria, and other areas of recent civil war. Amelia is emotionally broken by the violence around her- totally ambivalent toward her family (as they are to her), and closed to deep friendships, love, or any kind of intimacy. While some of her schoolmates recycle the omnipresent violence into acting out, Amelia absorbs it and rechannels it into self-destruction. She anesthetize herself first through anorexia and then alcoholism, drifting through her twenties before suffering a total breakdown as the ghosts of the dead haunt her.

While Amelia's story is a novel, it's comprised of 23 disjoined episodic vignettes that unfold in chronological order over 25 years as Amelia passes from childhood to mentally ill adult. The first third of this debut-spanning 1969-79-is really, really good, unfortunately the focus is lost with the chapter "Mr. Hunch in the Ascendant, 1980." The longest chapter, it's a rambling, surreal story about a mentally ill neighborhood guy who escapes and hangs own with Amelia. It's so long and so unconnected to her that the dark spell of her story is broken and is never recaptured. There are too many gaps between her childhood, alcoholic adulthood, and breakdown to get a full sense of the tragedy.

There are some nice part in the rest of the book though, such as the chapter "Incoming, 1986" where two old schoolmates run into each other and over the course of a drink contrive the murder of one's husband (all of which is totally unrelated to Amelia). One the whole, the novel shows great promise, although as the author grew up in Belfast at the exact same time as Amelia, and moved to London just as she did, one wonders what she'll draw on for her next book.

How often do you get to put together the words chilling and funny? But this book is both and does it well. It enmeshes you so deeply in Belfast, during the Troubles, than when you look up you eye everyone to see if they are IRA or British soldiers. I was amazed by the author's control over voice as perspective shifts from the protagonist to other characters and was moved by the horror that is drawn so well by the young voice recounting it. Every Brit and every Irish American should read it to discover and uncover the not-so-secret secrets of the Troubles that we all scoffed at. There was nothing to scoff at. The ghosts come back to haunt you.

For the reader who is an enthusiast of Northern Irish fiction, this is a must. Enjoyable reading, although at times painfully disturbing for its realism and humanity.
It does not escape the "political" situation, yet it escapes the usual cliches in novels about this country. People's lives are still affected by "the Provies," Protestants and Catholics fall victim to bigotry, both sides are maimed and killed. However, this gives much more intense insight into the mind and body of Amelia, her views toward life in the war-torn country, her ambivalent feelings towards family,friends, and sexuality, and her combatting madness--her own and that which permeates her society as a whole.

An "Angela's Ashes," Ulster-style. Definitely difficult to put down.