48 pages • 1 hour read
Donal RyanThe Queen of Dirt Island
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 91-121Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 91-95 Summary
Standing by the pool, Doreen warns Chris to not come any closer to her. Chris, Saoirse, and her mother hang back on the path out of instinct. Doreen claims that she’s drugged Pearl but hasn’t harmed her. She says that a local woman used to help women with unwanted children dispose of them by drowning them in this pool. Chris manages to get to Doreen and grabs Pearl, but Doreen throws herself into the water. Later, Saoirse can’t stop herself from picturing Doreen going into the water and imagining what she must have been feeling at that moment. Pearl is unharmed during the encounter, but Doreen drowns, despite Chris’s best efforts to save her.
Now a widower, Chris says that he’s unable to live alone. At one point, Chris impulsively blames Saoirse’s mother for Doreen’s death, claiming it wouldn’t have happened if Eileen had accepted his marriage proposal years before. Chris boards up the farmhouse and rents an apartment in town so he can be closer to other people, upsetting Nana greatly.
After the dramatic events of the previous few weeks, Saoirse is glad when life goes back to normal again. Josh talks about bearing witness as a novelist and tells Saoirse that he feels like his destiny has been preordained since when Honey left him, he was able to conquer his feelings of inadequacy through his relationship with Saoirse. Saoirse feels resentful at this as it implies that she is merely an empty vessel for Josh’s emotional stability. Josh takes Saoirse to the spot by the lake where they first made love, which makes Saoirse happy as this place has no connection to Honey. As Saoirse looks at the spot, Josh admits that he speaks to Honey on the phone a few times per week and asks Saoirse not to be mad at him for hiding this fact from her. Saoirse feels diminished again but feels better once Josh draws her close and tells her that he loves her.
Chapters 96-100 Summary
Josh tells Saoirse that he wants her to collaborate with him on a new novel. He tells her that he wants the novel to be based on her family’s struggles, which Saoirse thinks is self-centered. However, Saoirse can’t stop herself from imagining how wonderful the future with Josh would be. To help Josh with his novel, Saoirse begins to take notes on her daily life, which Josh transforms into novel chapters at night. Saoirse enjoys this because it allows her to be vulnerable to Josh, but from a distance, where it’s less likely that she’ll get hurt.
The land that Saoirse’s mother inherited turns out to be a part of a massive rezoning of farmland into housing developments. Richard attacked her knowing that her land would soon become the most valuable part of the farm. Saoirse’s mother finds out that Chris has sold his farm, which was also supposed to be rezoned, to Richard, for far less money than it’s worth.
Saoirse reflects on how strange it is that her mother and Nana have been so close for so long, much longer than Saoirse’s mother was ever in a relationship with Nana’s son. Eventually, Saoirse’s mother tells Nana that Chris has sold the family farm, which makes her weep. Richard surveys his new property as Saoirse’s mother heads to Dirt Island to survey her own land to stand up to Richard.
Chapters 101-105 Summary
Saoirse begins to fill notebooks for Josh with her memories. As she does so, Saoirse begins to remember and recontextualize events and people from her own past, including Oonagh Jones, Oisín, and Breedie. Saoirse enjoys writing and feels like she is good at it, but she sticks to her task of bringing Josh her notes that he can transform into novel chapters.
One Saturday, Josh and Saoirse go to shop in Limerick and run into a woman whom Josh knows from his work at the factory. Saoirse notices that Josh has turned red-faced and panicked at the sight of the woman. The woman turns to Saoirse and remarks that she must be Josh’s mystery woman named Honey, whom he talks to on the phone at work. Josh drives Saoirse home, and they argue over the previous conversation. Saoirse accuses Josh of still being in love with Honey, which he vehemently denies. Saoirse imagines the various possibilities, ending with a vision of Honey berating her for stealing her man.
When Saoirse gets home, Nana apologizes to her for encouraging her to pursue Josh and tells her to try to be happy. Later that evening, Josh texts to ask if she wants to take a weekend away with him, and she agrees. They have a great time on their trip, and Saoirse is starting to trust Josh again when an English man assaults her in public. Josh drags her away. Saoirse remembers the time that Josh got into a fight to protect Honey, and she realizes that he wouldn’t fight to protect her. Saoirse feels upset as she realizes that Josh’s passions for her and Honey are different. Josh tries to reconnect with her by bringing up the notes on her life that she’s writing for his novel, but Saoirse can’t stop herself from imagining Josh and Honey mocking her over those notes.
Chapters 105-110 Summary
Josh delivers the completed manuscript to Saoirse, which is titled The Queen of Dirt Island. The story reflects Saoirse’s mother’s life, and Saoirse recognizes a distorted and alien version of herself as the narrative continues. She stops reading the manuscript, realizing that Josh never truly saw her as she was. In Josh’s manuscript, Saoirse sees distorted versions of her family. Those characters include her mother as a manipulator, Paudie as a traitor who is murdered by the mother character, and her father as an IRA terrorist who dies from a suicide bombing in London. Then, Saoirse encounters Josh’s description of her assault by the singer in the local band, which he has dramatized and twisted.
Saoirse goes over to Josh’s residence to confront him over the manuscript. As she speaks to him, Saoirse realizes that Josh’s sadness hides a deep selfishness. As Josh desperately tries to explain his writing, Saoirse feels tongue-tied and can’t speak. As Josh begins to cry, Saoirse’s paralysis breaks, and she screams at him, saying that the manuscript is an insult to her family and that Josh is selfish and a bad writer. During the fight, Josh pushes Saoirse down and begins punching the wall in frustration.
Josh’s family intervenes, scared of the sound of fighting. Josh calms down slightly, and Saoirse notices an unfinished painting on an easel by the window: a painting of Josh and Honey, naked and entwined. As Saoirse reflects on Josh’s impression of her, he gathers up his manuscript and burns it in the kitchen.
Chapters 111-115 Summary
Josh goes to clean himself up while his family comforts Saoirse. Eventually, he emerges, and he walks Saoirse down the road, holding her hand. He kisses her at the gate, thus ending their relationship.
Uncle Richard’s luck seems to turn. The developers begin to talk about backing out of buying his property since a local man was killed by the police for pointing a gun at them during a dispute over his land. Saoirse’s mother feels sorry for Richard and starts to talk about selling her inheritance, Dirt Island, to help Saoirse start a career. On a Sunday, Eileen heads to Richard’s place to sell him her land. Richard agrees and purchases back Dirt Island, selling his current farm back to Chris. Nana is happy with this decision and shows more energy, even going outside at times. However, when she reminds Eileen of all the people they have lost, Eileen begins to weep.
Honey writes a letter to Saoirse, and Saoirse is delighted to hear from her. Honey tells Saoirse that she knows the whole story with Josh. Honey never blames Saoirse, but Saoirse still feels the letter is cruel in its “unrelenting openness.”
Pearl is 13 years old before she asks about her father. Saoirse tells Pearl that her father is a famous singer, which makes Pearl happy—it explains where she got her nice singing voice. Pearl downloads all of the singer’s songs and wonders what it would be like to one day meet him.
Chapters 116-121 Summary
Chris starts to date again, to Nana’s relief. Chris met the woman on a hiking trail near his home, where he goes to pick up trash that people leave behind in nature. The woman is American, and she asks him whether she can rent a room in the farmhouse for a writing retreat.
Nana suffers a series of strokes, which she refers to as her “knockouts.” Knowing that she might pass soon, Nana tells Saoirse to take care of Eileen for her. One day, Nana, Eileen, Saoirse, and Pearl go for a drive, visiting friends and Chris’s farm. Later that night, Nana says she had a lovely day, and then she passes in her sleep.
Pearl takes the exams to graduate from high school. She plans to go to Mary Immaculate College and train to be a teacher. As the teacher goes around the class collecting the exams, Pearl begins to panic and comforts herself by rubbing a medal that Nana gave her before her death. Pearl remembers when a bundle of books arrived at the house and Nana mocked the deliveryman behind his back. Pearl rereads the first question in her exam, which asks a question about a novel titled The Queen of Dirt Island by Saoirse Aylward.
Pearl defers her second year in college so she can travel the world, which worries her grandmother, who openly hopes that she will miss them so badly that she will come running straight back home. Saoirse and Eileen drive Pearl to the airport to fly to New York, where Josh and Honey are awaiting her arrival. As they pull onto the main road, “Pearl Aylward [feels] her world at once contracting and expanding, and she [feels] her heartbeat steady in her chest, as they [move], those women, through the green country, into the blue horizon” (242).
Chapters 90-121 Analysis
In the final section of The Queen of Dirt Island, the motif of storytelling becomes recontextualized and reinterpreted. The clearest example of a storyteller is Josh, who explicitly thinks of himself as a novelist. However, Josh seems unable to conceive of and compose a novel on his own. Early on, he depended on Honey for inspiration and help; that role is transferred to Saoirse when she becomes his romantic partner. Earlier in the novel, the examples of storytelling, such as the stories told by Nana and Eileen, were generally positive, with stories used as ways to connect. However, Josh demonstrates, through his selfishness, that stories can also be destructive. The stories that Saoirse writes for Josh about her family make her feel extremely vulnerable, and when Josh writes her family as a part of a generic potboiler thriller, Saoirse sees it as stealing and twisting her intimate revelations. Storytelling, in Josh’s hands, becomes an impediment to his ability to clearly see Saoirse rather than a tool to help him see her true self, as Saoirse expected. In Josh’s hands, Saoirse’s story becomes Josh’s story; because Saoirse understands narrative and storytelling as a method of self-definition, she views his novel as a form of invalidating her and her history. Josh’s storytelling is a symptom of broader problems in their relationship rather than the sole cause of their breakup; other issues that Josh and Saoirse have with each other rear their heads during the process of telling stories.
However, following her breakup with Josh, Saoirse is able to recontextualize storytelling for herself: She also writes a novel called The Queen of Dirt Island. Her novel gets published and gains critical acclaim, while Josh ends up burning his novel on the stove. Josh’s novel, then, becomes a symbol of his relationship with Saoirse; by impulsively burning the novel, he’s also destroying his notions of Saoirse and her values. However, Saoirse is able to take her own story and write it in a way where it doesn’t get destroyed but rather propagated and distributed. In this way, The Queen of Dirt Island demonstrates that honesty and truth are the positive qualities of storytelling and that good stories can create compassion and empathy between people. These qualities stand in opposition to the empty artistic ambition of people who behave selfishly, like Josh. The theme of The Pitfalls of Relationships gains an extra dimension here as Saoirse is only able to access her authorial ambitions due to the fallout from her experience with Josh.
In the novel’s final section, Pearl continues to grow and come into her own as a person; the focus shifts slowly from Saoirse and her life to the life of her daughter, tracking her arc toward further independence in detail. The novel’s unique structure reinforces this shift in perspective. Each of the chapters is exactly 500 words long, and many of the events of the narrative take place between the chapters, with the chapters themselves typically focusing on the consequences of those events. This structure gives the chapters the quality of a snapshot; each of the 500-word chapters serves to explore a short moment in time. When Pearl begins to take center stage, the snapshots shift to showing what she thinks of her mother, whose perspective the reader has mostly followed up until this point. The arcs of the characters, then, are demonstrated to be intertwined; the ways in which Saoirse and Eileen change and mature as characters also affect Pearl’s growth and development.
The Queen of Dirt Island ends with a focus on Pearl. This contrasts with the opening, which focuses on Eileen as Saoirse was a baby at the time. This contrast serves to bring the novel together, reflecting the structure of the opening in its ending. However, the narrative concludes with the expansion of Pearl’s story by allowing her to leave Ireland in a way never afforded to the other women in her family due to the constrictions of Women in Society. The first chapter reflects the final one in other ways; for instance, both chapters are centered around driving a child somewhere—in the first chapter, driving Saoirse home from the hospital, and in the final chapter, driving Pearl to the airport. However, the function of driving is different in the narrative. Whereas Saoirse is heading home, Pearl is heading into the wider world, intentionally leaving her home. This is the first expansion the Aylward women have had away from home, demonstrating the family-centered narrative arc that starts with Saoirse’s birth and ends with Pearl’s independence.
