A Severed Space: The Suburbs of South Dublin in Contemporary Irish Fiction

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the interrelations between geography, space, and identity in contemporary fictional representations of the south Dublin suburbs in the work of Barry McCrea, Kevin Power, and Justin Quinn. It argues that the affluent and culturally powerful south Dublin suburbs have always had a particular importance in the Irish imagination, dating back to the nineteenth century. During the Celtic Tiger period, the apparent economic and cultural detachment of these suburbs, not only from the rest of Ireland but also from the rest of Dublin, became exacerbated in the public mind, albeit in complex and nuanced ways which, it is argued here, often ironically draws attention to this same sense of detachment as ‘illusory’.