Introduction

Construction of Identity in Northern Irish Novels 273
acknowledges plans of setting up his own non-sectarian political party, which he
would like to call OTG. In the end everybody has found love, mostly in the opposite
of his or her own world view.
Deirde Madden, One by One in the Darkness (1996)
One by One in the Darkness like Eureka Street is set in 1994 shortly before the IRA
ceasefire. It deals with the lives of the sisters Helen, Cate and Sally Quinn and
their mother Emily who lost their beloved father and husband Charlie Quinn in a
sectarian murder. The story begins with Cate visiting her family in the Northern
Irish countryside. Cate herself is living in London working for a fashion magazine.
Actually her name is spelled with a ‘K’, Kate, but she has changed it to Cate because
this seems to sound less Irish in her eyes. The reason for her visit is that she
is having a baby, which comes as a shock for her mother. Cate keeps it a secret
that she decided to have the baby on purpose although being unmarried and with
no prospect to marry the father in the future. Sally is working as a teacher for the
local primary school, the same school the three sisters went to themselves. She is
the only one who has almost continuously stayed near their home and who was
there to help their mother through her bereavement. Helen by contrast works as a
solicitor who is specialised in terrorist cases defending IRA men. Although she
chose this career to help those unjustly accused, one of her current cases somehow
unnerves her. She has to defend Oliver Maguire, a young man in his twenties,
who is accused of having murdered a taxi driver. Worst of all she believes he really
did it. All three of the sisters are living single lives. The present story is undercut
with remembrances of the sisters and their mother’s past. Gradually the reader
learns about the girls’ childhood in the 1960s and 1970s and about their relatives,
especially their uncle Brian and uncle Peter. Although the sisters were still too
young to fully understand the dimension of the outbreak of the Troubles they
remember discussions about politics and the civil rights marches. While Brian was
often defending some of the IRA tactics Charlie and Peter always were against
violence in any form and strongly condemned the sectarian killings on both sides.
On top Peter did not believe in any of the religious principles, neither Catholic
nor Protestant. The readers also learn how the British Army invaded their
neighbourhood and their homes and made them feel like strangers in their own
country. During the course of the novel the exact circumstances of their father’s
death is also revealed. While waiting for his brother Brian in the latter’s kitchen
two masked men stormed the house and shot him mistaking Charlie for Brian. In
the end Emily slowly begins to accept the baby and they all look forward to a
better future for “nothing can ever be so bad again” as what has happened in the
past to them.