Specter and Doubt in Anna Burns’ No Bones

Abstract

Catholic, working class, and a resident of Ardoyne—historically, the West Belfast stronghold of the Provisional IRA and bastion of Catholic dissent—Anna Burns (1962-) was born in the political turmoil of post-1950s Northern Ireland. Her first novel, No Bones (2001), recounts the era of civil strife and state violence that goes by the moniker “the Troubles.” Burns’ debut work was highly acclaimed, winning the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize and becoming a finalist for the coveted Orange Prize for Fiction. She has since published a second novel, Little Constructions (2007), which, though not as directly historical as the first, returns to many of its themes, especially the violence and enmity that continue to plague her homeland. In this chapter, I review and theorize Burns’ historical, experimental novel, No Bones. Like Anne Devlin and Medbh McGuckian, Burns documents the conflicted history of Belfast from the palette of personal memory and, with McGuckian, turns to imagery as key narrative mode. Reminiscent of Devlin’s characters, Amelia Lovett and her friends wait for the Troubles to end, for nation and home to reconsolidate, for a semblance of normalcy to return, or simply to feel real hunger and full sentience undiluted by alcohol or the adrenaline high of violent experience.