Callaghan's first novel, Mothers (1982) treats the story of three generaHas Anyone Seen Heather?

tions of Irish unmarried mothers. Although it touches on the subject of abortion, it is pro-choice. Topical in Ireland at the time of publication, it remains undated today and has several interesting, comic characters. Her second novel, Confessions of a Prodigal Daughter (1985), set in Dublin in the early 1960s, takes for its narrator an artistic teenager, Anne O'Brien, and examines mother/daughter conflicts.

The Awkward Girl (1990) humorously weaves the story of Sally Ann Fitzpatrick, a young contemporary Irish woman, with the people she meets as she moves between the worlds of middle class Dublin and American academia. The chapters, which can be read separately as short stories, display contrasting viewpoints.

Other novels about Irish teenagers include: Vincent Banville's Daisy Chain War (1990), which tells the story of an Irish family during World War II...