I’m beyond honored to announce that All the Walls of Belfast is a finalist for the National Readers Choice Award!
This is the first award either of my books has been up to win. Unfortunately, due to COVID there won’t be an in-person awards ceremony, but it’s so exciting to see the story I dreamed up after a trip to Belfast, my first book baby, be nominated for a national award.
It’s so hard to believe All the Walls of Belfast, my debut novel that took over five years to write, has been out of over a year. It’s still a little surreal.
Here’s a bit more about All the Walls of Belfast:
The Carnival at Bray meets West Side Story in Sarah Carlson’s powerful YA debut; set in post-conflict Belfast (Northern Ireland), alternating between two teenagers, both trying to understand their past and preserve their future. Seventeen-year-olds, Fiona and Danny must choose between their dreams and the people they aspire to be.
Fiona and Danny were born in the same hospital. Fiona’s mom fled with her to the United States when she was two, but, fourteen years after the Troubles ended, a forty-foot-tall peace wall still separates her dad’s Catholic neighborhood from Danny’s Protestant neighborhood.
After chance brings Fiona and Danny together, their love of the band Fading Stars, big dreams, and desire to run away from their families unites them. Danny and Fiona must help one another overcome the burden of their parents’ pasts. But one ugly truth might shatter what they have…
Praise for All the Walls of Belfast
“Compassionate, honest, and hopeful, All The Walls of Belfast celebrates the power of first love to build bridges and scale walls.
~ Marie Marquardt, author of Dream Things True
“A powerful story about how the stones our parents throw in the past make ripples in our futures.”
~Christina June, award-winning author of It Started With Goodbye
“I loved it! The story kept building and building as I was falling deeper and deeper for these characters, Danny and Fiona, the Romeo and Juliet of Belfast…a stellar debut!” ― Jessie Ann Foley, award-winning author of The Carnival at Bray
“All the Walls of Belfast is the gripping story of courage and redemption in turbulent post-conflict Northern Ireland. Brilliantly written, this vivid fiction meets reality novel reveals how two teens navigate life with the fallout of their parents’ actions. ~Angie Stanton, award winning author of Waking in Time
A Barnes & Noble Teen Most Anticipated Indie YA Book of 2019
“Set against the backdrop of the religious tensions in Northern Ireland [Carlson’s] debut features characters with stark religious differences and histories that must be overcome… an endearing story full of pain, love, and strength.” Booklist
“… a young adult romance with real meaning behind it, and it is a welcome addition to the genre.” ~Foreward Reviews
School Library Journal.:
Gr 8 Up-American teen Fiona travels to Belfast, Northern Ireland, to reunite with her father whom she has not seen since she was a toddler. Having no memories of her older half brothers or her birthplace, Fiona tentatively gets to know her family and explores her culture and community. She discovers her Catholic father was formally a key member of the IRA and his bombs killed many people during the Troubles, a time when ethno-nationalism led to violence between Catholics and Protestants. Fiona meets Danny, a Protestant who is studying for his school finals and wishes to join the British Army as a nurse against his gangster father’s wishes. The two begin to see one another, but their parents’ pasts threaten their relationship. Alternating chapters between Fiona and Danny establish their family dynamics and allow readers to root for them as their believable romance blossoms. Author Sarah Carlson creates an atmospheric narrative, explaining just enough of the current political and cultural landscape to understand how the walls running through Belfast still affect both communities on either side of it. The story doesn’t shy away from showing gritty reality and dysfunctional families that are partly due to the conflicts that ended only recently. VERDICT This contemporary drama has an appealing romance and the nuanced story may push teens to think critically about religious and cultural differences; and ultimately about forgiveness. A solid choice for all teen collections.-Nancy McKay, Ella Johnson Memorial Library, Hampshire, IL
Image courtesy of Netflix“Whatever you do, don’t slag off the Pope. We’re outnumbered!”
This line comes from an episode of Derry Girls. You may have noticed it trending on Netflix lately. Originally on Channel 4 in the U.K., “Derry Girls” follows the hilarious antics of five awkward and often misguided teens as they try to navigate the universal struggles of teen-dom. But against the not-so-universal backdrop of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Snappy one liners juxtaposed with armed sectarian conflict. All set to an amazing soundtrack of all your early nineties favorites.
One of the things that struck me during the years I spent researching for my debut Young Adult novel All the Walls of Belfast, set in post-Troubles Belfast, and Derry Girls is the tribalistic concept of identity and how it divides. Clive, the wee Protestant from East Belfast surrounded by Catholics, captures a deep-rooted them-versus-us fear well in that snappy bit of dialogue as he warns a suspected fellow Protestant against busting out the Protestant joke book.
Think the growing division in the United States between Democrats and Republicans, but to a whole new level; imagine physical walls between Democrat and Republican neighborhoods. And add in thirty years of sectarian bloodshed and hundreds of years of systematic oppression and violence by one group against the other.
The Troubles was not about religious beliefs. It was about history and ethnic/cultural identity. In the early 1600s , the King of England used Protestant Scottish and English people loyal to the Crown to colonize what is now Northern Ireland. He gave them lands belonging to local Irish Catholics resisting the Crown. Boiled down simply and speaking generally, Protestants see themselves as British and Loyalist or Unionist and wish for Northern Ireland to stay in the United Kingdom. Catholics see themselves as Irish and Republican (no affiliation to American Republicans) or Nationalist and are more likely to want a united Ireland free of British rule. In Northern Ireland today, the main political parties are still Unionist (Protestant affiliated) or Republican (Catholic affiliated).
The Troubles lasted from 1968 until 1998. Over 3600 people were killed and many more were injured. It began during the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, after attempts at peaceful protest demanding equal rights for Catholics (“one man, one vote,” protection from job discrimination, access to equal resources such as quality housing) were met with violence on behalf of the British government and the mostly Protestant police force. At first, most of the violence on the Catholic side was in defense of their neighborhoods, which were under siege following the unrest. From there, the Provisional Irish Republican Army launched an armed campaign to force concessions around civil rights and to get a united Ireland. Protestant Loyalist paramilitaries took up arms out of fears of a united Ireland.
Derry Girls is told through the Catholic lens, but it’s really more about people trying to live normal lives as the sectarian conflict rages in the background. It highlights how normalized things like bombs being planted down the street and British soldiers searching your school bus with massive guns can become.
The first ten seconds Derry Girls brilliantly captures the conflict of identity: an armored British military car drives past two boys spray painting over the “London” part of a Londonderry road sign. Londonderry is it’s official name, but it was called Derry until the early 1600s, when the English government changed it to Londonderry to thank a bunch of London investors. Especially during the Troubles, you could tell tribal affiliation based on what a person called it. Catholics called Derry. Protestants called it Londonderry. The conflict of identity comes down even to the name of the city in which Derry Girls takes place.
When I was traveling around the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland researching for All the Walls of Belfast, I was struck by the fact that in the Republic of Ireland road signs called it Derry, but as soon as I crossed the border into Northern Ireland (and switched from kilometers and hour to miles per hour), road signs called it Londonderry.
Let’s go back to making fun of the Pope. Here’s the context. One of the Derry girls, Clare, starts calling into question why they hate Protestants. She decides to wear a Union Jack dress to a party thrown by someone from their all-girls school. Clive, the wayward Protestant from East Belfast, launches himself at Clare, assuming she’s Protestant because of the dress, and warns her they’re surrounded, so don’t say anything that might offend Catholics. Clive has spent days pretending to be Ukrainian, and being led around on a leash, because he’s so terrified these Catholic girls will figure out he’s a “Prod.”
He’d probably never actually talked to a Catholic before. And the Derry girls had probably never really talked to a Protestant either. In the first episode of Derry Girls one of the girls mentioned going to “Friends Across the Barricades,” a cross community program meant to bring Protestant and Catholic kids together.
While traveling and researching for my book, I learned, at least as of seven years ago, it’s not uncommon for people to go their entire childhood without having meaningful interactions with kids from the other side, especially in working class communities. In All the Walls of Belfast, one of the two main characters had never spoken to a Catholic in his eighteen years of life. But beyond not talking, deeply rooted fear and anger toward them can still linger, even in people who were children or not yet born during the Troubles because it’s passed on from one generation to the next.
A fact that shocked me: even though the Troubles have been over for more than twenty years, as of 2015, only 7% of children in Northern Ireland attended religiously integrated schools. The vast majority of Catholic and Protestant children don’t even go to school together. Government agencies track school achievement data by religion like we track by race in the United States.
It makes one think about how easy it is now, especially with social media, to retreat into our echo chambers and vilify the other side as elitist or ignorant or wanting to murder unborn babies or letting school children be slaughtered as a sacrifice to protect gun rights. Us versus them. And not just our politicians. All of us.
Twenty years after the Troubles ended, the vast majority of Northern Ireland has moved on. But there are still 109 peace walls dividing Catholic and Protestant areas in Belfast. During my times in Northern Ireland, I asked people if the walls should come down. The answer from those living around them was pretty much always no. Because they were still afraid of them.
It was these walls that inspired me to write All the Walls of Belfast, a love story about a boy and girl separated by a forty-foot-tall peace wall, and the legacy of their parents’ pasts, long after the Troubles ended.
Seasons 1 and 2 of Derry Girls are currently available on US Netflix. All the Walls of Belfast is available on Barnes & Noble, Amazon, IndieBound, and Book Depository.
Derry Girls Season 1 glossary:
Wain: small child or infant
GCSE: an exam taken after year fourteen (when students are 15 or 16) that determines whether a student can move on to A-Levels, which are usually required to get admitted to university.
College: a name for a kind of high school.
Slag off: making fun of someone; can be good natured.
Class: a good thing
Fanny: vagina
Quid: pounds (money)
Chippy: fish and chip shop
Slabber: a smart ass
Buck: engage in intercourse
Boak/boke: puke
Craic (pronounced crack): a good time or good thing
Fruit: derogatory term for a homosexual, used as an insult
Minger: unattractive or repulsive
Fringe: bangs
Balaclavas: ski masks
Prod: Protestant
Fenian: term for Catholics; can be derogatory
Tout: snitch to the authorities
Provo: member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army
Wee RA (pronounced ra) man: member of the IRA
The Free State: Republic of Ireland
My debut YA Contemporary All the Walls of Belfast has been out a month now! So hard to believe. To learn more, check it out on Goodreads. In honor of that, I wanted to share pictures of the setting. Before and while writing this book, I had the opportunity to visit all the settings in the book; all the pictures are mine.
To learn more about the pictures, and a deeper context of the book, check out my Instagram story--a tour of the settings featured in ATWOB.
My debut novel All the Walls of Belfast, set in post-Troubles Belfast, Northern Ireland, centers around two teens grappling with the fallout of their parents’ pasts as they strive to define their own futures. But one ugly truth, not the peace wall between their neighborhoods, might tear them apart.
One of the core themes of All the Walls of Belfast revolves around the legacy of trauma being passed down to the next generation. I wanted to take a second to explore how the aftermath of their parents’ choices during the Troubles have fundamentally shaped both Danny and Fiona’s lives.
The Troubles lasted from 1968 until 1998. Over 3600 people were killed and many more were injured. It began during the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, after attempts at peaceful protest demanding equal rights for Catholics (“one man, one vote,” protection from job discrimination, access to equal resources such as quality housing) were met with violence on behalf of the British government and the mostly Protestant police force. At first, most of the violence on the Catholic side was in defense of their neighborhoods, which were under siege following the unrest. From there, the Provisional Irish Republican Army launched an armed campaign to force concessions around civil rights and to get a united Ireland. Protestant Loyalist paramilitaries took up arms out of fears of a united Ireland.
The Troubles was not about religious beliefs. It was about history and ethnic/cultural identity. In the early 1600s, the King of England used Protestant Scottish and English people loyal to the Crown to colonize what is now Northern Ireland (the Plantation of Ulster). He gave them lands belonging to local Irish Catholics resisting the Crown. Boiled down simply and speaking generally, Protestants see themselves as British and Loyalist or Unionist and wish for Northern Ireland to stay in the United Kingdom. Catholics see themselves as Irish and Republican (no affiliation to American Republicans) or Nationalist and are more likely to want a united Ireland free of British rule. In Northern Ireland today, the main political parties are still Unionist (Protestant affiliated) or Republican (Catholic affiliated).
The legacy of the Troubles still lingers, particularly in working class neighborhoods like the Falls (Catholic) and the Shankill (Protestant). Twenty years after the Troubles ended, the vast majority of Northern Ireland has moved on. But there are still dozens of peace walls dividing Catholic and Protestant areas. During my times in Northern Ireland, I asked people if the walls should come down. The answer from those living around them was pretty much always no. Because they were still afraid of them.
All the Walls of Belfast is set in 2012, so Danny and Fiona were small children when the Troubles officially ended with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Fiona didn’t even live in Belfast at this point; her mother fled to the United States when she was two. So neither of them can really even remember the Troubles. But their fathers were both heavily involved in the armed conflict. Danny’s father was in the Ulster Volunteer Force, a Protestant paramilitary. Fiona’s father was in the Provisional Irish Republican Army, the Catholic paramilitary. Both of their families were torn apart by the violence. Neither of them can remember it, but it has drastically shaped their lives.
Danny is well aware of his father’s involvement, and his father and community’s worldview has drastically shaped his own. Danny’s father is still involved in a Protestant paramilitary called the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and pressures Danny to follow in his footsteps, run guns, forcibly collect protection money from local businesses, and sell drugs under the guise of protecting his Protestant culture. Danny takes pride in his Protestant culture and proudly takes part in activities that can be considered sectarian, like marching in flute band parades and building bonfires to celebrate the Twelfth of July, which celebrates the victory of Protestant King William of Orange over deposed Catholic King James II in 1690.
The working class neighborhood Danny has grown up in is religiously segregated. Danny’s never talked to anyone from the Falls. Or really a Catholic. As of 2015, only 7% of children in Northern Ireland attended religiously integrated schools. The vast majority of Catholic and Protestant children don’t even go to school together. Government agencies track school achievement data by religion like we track by race in the United States. He refers to Catholics as Taigs, which is a derogatory word, but has no idea why he even calls them that. It’s just what his dad does. In the book, Danny works to re-write his worldview and ingrained prejudice.
Danny and Fiona were born in the same hospital in Belfast, but the choices of their parents lead to very different lives for them. In Fiona’s case, her parents choices lead to her family being severed in two. She ended up in Wisconsin with her mom, and her father and half brothers remained in Belfast. There had been no contact for fifteen years until her father finally finds her. Fiona discovers her mom hid her from a father desperate to be in her life. After Fiona flies to Belfast to be reunited with the family she doesn’t remember, she walks into the aftermath oblivious both to the lingering impact on her father and half-brothers, and the forty-foot peace wall separating her father’s Catholic neighborhood, the Falls, from the Protestant neighborhood a few feet away, the Shankill, where Danny’s from. It was her father’s choices and political beliefs that lead to their family being torn apart in All the Walls of Belfast.
Both Danny and Fiona are left wondering what their lives would have been had they been born somewhere else, but both draw strength from either their families or their community.
All the Walls of Belfast, in part, is about reconciliation and defining your own future apart from the legacies of your parents’ pasts. In Danny’s case, it’s fighting to free himself from the burden of the past and create a define his own identity free of his family’s sectarian paramilitary involvement. In Fiona’s case, it’s grappling with who her father is—a freedom fighter or a terrorist?—and if his past must define their future.
Learn more about my research process for All the Walls of Belfast.
Sarah J. Carlson 