No Mate for the Magpie
Frances Molloy

Belonging in the company of Flann O’Brien and Stevie Smith, this wonderfully original novel tells the story of Ann Elizabeth McGlone, a Catholic girl growing up in Northern Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s. Written in a language of marvelous colloquial vividness, it is actually a series of tiny stories—from Ann’s birth into a large working-class family in Derry to her misadventures os a machinist in a pajama factory, nun (temporary), inmate in a mental institution (treatment for a sore neck), bacon-slicer in Belfast, political demonstrator, and more, until she finally decides to leave “the compellin’ godforsaken shores” of Ireland altogether.
Ann Elizabeth McGlone is an unforgettable character, and No Mate for the Magpie is a gem of a comic novel in the great tradition of Irish storytelling.

“A special story, funny and touching.... You become part of its world.”
—Maeve Binchy

“... Ann Elizabeth McGlone is like a very young, female Irish Candide.”
—The Guardian

Frances Molloy is also the author of Women Are The Scourge Of The Earth. She died in 1991. 

Paperback / $18.95 (Can $24.95) / ISBN 978-0-89255-105-7 / 170 pages / Fiction