On the twelfth day of her hunger strike, Maggy is unable to tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined. That’s true of what brought her here too: was she IRA, or did she just take risks for the sake of a friend?

Julia O’Faolain paints a portrait of young Irish girls and their unseverable connection, showing solidarity in places politics cannot reach.

Published by Faber

Released March 2019

I’m finding this series of Faber Stories addictive for fitting into busy days or for reading at times when my mind is travelling at a different speed to my body.

Today’s little gem is Daughters of Passion by Julia O’Faolain, a new to me author. This story is a political tale about a young woman in an English prison, hunger striking for political status, after murdering a detective with an IRA bomb in London.

As she resists the attempts to feed her, she reflects on her childhood as an orphan, being brought up in a convent, her friendships with the two women pivotal to her current situation, and the way in which some paths are accidentally inevitable.

‘Brought up by nuns, she had lost her faith, found another, fought for it and been imprisoned.’

I liked this story and enjoyed O’Faolain’s writing style. This is the type of story that I’d like to read expanded out into a novel, I was definitely left wanting from this one, which I’ve come to see as the benchmark for a great short story.