What a relief not to be 27 year old Majella O'Neill of the miserable small town of Aghybogey, N. Ireland, near the Free State border, a place just as awful as its name sounds. Working in A Salt and Battered!, a chipper (fast food /fried fish shop) and observing its patrons endlessly to the tune of "Wha can I get chew?", Majella's beloved Gran has been robbed, beaten, and has died from an assault, her Ma is an alcoholic, and her Da disappeared after his cousin died during the Troubles. Now there's a shaky peace, but Majella is stuck, with few friends and little to look forward to. Somewhat paralyzed by her inertia and her obsessive-compulsive, self-soothing habits, even a trip to a bigger town to buy a new comforter requires a major decision and a dreaded excursion. For all that's negative, there's something about Majella that is admirable and sympathetic, mostly her sense of humor and her hilariously brutal analysis of the foibles of her neighbors. For an American reader, poring through the unfamiliar slang, the casual cruelty, the sex and gossip, is like being exposed to an entirely new world – completely enjoyable to visit but relief that it isn’t your home. But, as is told, joy could come in the morning. ( )

I appreciate the grittiness of the writing and the actual descriptions of annoying parts about being human and female. However there is much that is NOT said in this story that make it a bit frustrating to read in addition to the slang and dialect of Northern Ireland that really slowed down my reading. ( )

I don't normally review books I don't finish. But wow. I could NOT connect with anyone or anything in this book. It is depressing, boring, and just a chore to get through. After the kittens, I cut myself loose. I've read plenty of sad/real life/'hard' books but this one is just devoid of any light. Hard to wrap my head around great the reviews for this. ( )

First off, I enjoyed this book immensely, not because it was a “page-turner” in the traditional sense, or that it was an incredible and extraordinary story, but because it was absolutely ordinary, sometimes crass and graphic, and 100% real.

Another in the long line of books I’ve read this year set in Ireland, I was taken from the usual scenic landscapes or busy cities to a small, gritty town with a tense past. Beginning with a tragedy, the story follows Majella through her everyday routine and interactions, specifying her likes and dislikes outright. I was absolutely thrilled that despite her less than “fit” physique or being classically attractive, Majella is comfortable in her own skin, confident in her abilities, and content in her unremarkable life. She’s honest and loyal without gushing and responsible without ambition.

I like to describe these types of books as being more about the journey than the destination. Focusing on relationships and engagements, recalling significant events and memories, and reveling in the tasks at hand, this brand of storytelling takes talent and finesse to be successful. Gallen has proven that she knows how to capture the reader’s attention with the perfect blend of commonplace and introspection. Taking a walk in Majella’s shoes and experiencing her life firsthand allows the reader to get a sense of what it’s like to live in post-conflict Northern Ireland with its unique trials and adversity.

It would be remiss for me to not warn the reader about the challenge of reading this book on an empty stomach. Descriptions in this book are so vivid and detailed that I craved fish and chips throughout the entire story and ended up making them upon finishing the book. They were delicious and I devoured them as quickly as I devoured this novel.

Thank you Algonquin Books and Michelle Gallen for an advanced copy of this book. The opinions are my own. ( )

Big Girl, Small Town recounts a week in the life of Majella O'Neill, not long after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement and the murder of Majella's own grandmother. Majella lives in a small, poor Border town and comes from a small, poor family—her mother's an unemployed alcoholic and it's implied that her father was disappeared by the IRA—and works a dead-end job in a local chipper. She is almost certainly autistic, but undiagnosed, and lives a life of narrowly constrained routine.

This is a tough book to rate in that Michelle Gallen clearly sets out to achieve certain things, and does so, but they're not necessarily things I enjoy or am interested in reading about right now. As a pen portrait of Majella and the town of Agheyboghey, it's vivid and convincing: I could absolutely believe in her as a person and Agheyboghey as a claustrophobic small Irish town in the early 2000s. Majella's deadpan observations are often morbidly funny, and Gallen's got a great ear for naturalistic dialogue.

But while Gallen's attention to sensory detail is just as precise, all of the mentions of body odour and bodily fluids soon became overwhelming, and I actually started to feel nauseated from the number of times Majella mashes and crams chips into her mouth. The choice to render the dialogue phonetically grated with me (it always does), I thought the pacing was off, and for me there was a little too much emphasis on character observation over character development. In many ways, a really strong first novel—just one I didn't click with. ( )