There's an expectation that all novels coming out of the Northern Ireland are only about the 'Troubles’.
To focus on the traumatic aftermath of the civil war is to miss the greater work being carried out by contemporary northern writers. Much like Michael Magee’s Close to Home, Rachel Connolly’s Lazy City takes on a task much bigger than solely reflecting the north-easterly part of Ireland.
Instead, Lazy City is a portrait of young womanhood, told through accounts of drink, drugs, sex and grief, as protagonist Erin returns from London to Belfast after the sudden death of her best friend.
Connolly’s wry humour cuts through the pageantry of sex lives, particularly the small talk between two people before they get on with it. Erin makes questionable romantic choices, returning to an ex. After these encounters, she trawls through text messages to her dead friend, Kate, searching for her ex's name, conjuring an opinion on him from the digital ether.
This insatiable searching becomes compulsive, as she pores over the environmental section of news sites, reading about pesticides disrupting bees, global food wastage, wildfires. Erin’s pain is visceral, overwhelming, and terribly understandable.
There’s real beauty in how Connolly crafts female relationships. Her writing of the dysfunctional relationship between Erin and her mother is akin to the care with which Anne Enright writes these dynamics. But it is Kate who looms over the novel.
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Listen: Rachel Connelly talks Lazy City on RTÉ Arena
Readers long used to the trend of ‘Sad Girl Lit’ await Erin’s descent into chaos, but Lazy City resists this route. Instead, it is poignant in asking: who is afforded the space for a full meltdown? Erin carries on with her work as an au pair as her world falls apart around her.
Coming to terms with grief is something of a cliché, instead Erin carries on much as any other twenty-something in Belfast would do: nights out, mediocre sex, and showing up to work. Grieving or otherwise, what else is there to be done?
Of course, Belfast is there in the background, scars and all. ‘This is a place which shows all its history, all its personality, all the time.’ In a conversation with an American – with whom she goes on to have an affair – Erin explains that people in Northern Ireland are not a monolith. No two experiences can ever be the same.
In this sense, Lazy City is both a ‘Belfast’ novel and a state-of-the-world novel, as it examines not only how we see ourselves, but how we interact with universal concerns, from climate change to grief.
Lazy City is published by Canongate
