The universe of The Wildelings captures the heady, pulsating energy of the changing capital city …
One of the novel’s key set pieces takes place during the Trinity Ball, an iconic event in the Dublin social calendar. In the book, disaster strikes; in real life, it didn’t. But it could have. A cauldron of freedom, youth, hormones, drugs, sex, and shifting cultural sands – it was a time ripe for experimentation and going “wild”.
Dublin in the early 1990s was a city on the brink of change, where the streets vibrated with new energy, yet the lingering power of the Catholic Church and the trauma of The Troubles still hung over us. There was a palpable sense of movement that defined the era, but also a constant push and pull between past and future – much like the lives of my characters in the novel. Culturally, it was an exhilarating moment. Music was everywhere – perhaps because I was 18 and tuned in – but it felt like a golden era. U2 were at the height of their powers, and alongside them, artists like Sinead O’Connor, Shane MacGowan, My Bloody Valentine, The Cranberries and The Frames shaped the sound of our generation. Their raw emotion, haunting lyrics, fresh new sounds, and ability to make us feel part of something bigger spoke to a generation grappling with both the euphoria of freedom and the weight of history.
Literature, too, was dynamic and evolving. Roddy Doyle became a cultural phenomenon in the 1990s with his idiosyncratic Barrytown Trilogy – The Commitments, The Snapper and The Van. The film adaptation of The Commitments catapulted Dublin into international stardom. Who can forget its boisterous energy, raucous sound, its gritty, edgy heart and humour and unapologetic portrayal of Dublin life? Theatre was equally vibrant, with bold voices like Billy Roche and Conor McPherson challenging traditional norms.
And of course, Dublin’s pub scene was thriving. The Temple Bar Pub, The Long Hall, and The Stag’s Head were the go-to spots for boozy afternoons. I spent more time than I’d like to admit in a velvet-clad snug, sipping on pints and chatting about everything from lipstick to Simone de Beauvoir to boys to clothes to acting – when I should have been at lectures. Fashion was just as free-spirited and unique.
With no big fast fashion chains like Zara or H&M, we relied on indie spots like Funky Donkey and Jenny Vander, which is still going strong today.
Grunge had totally taken over – flannel shirts, ripped jeans, and Doc Martens boots everywhere. I remember getting my first pair of purple Docs: I wore them with a purple and black check shirt, ripped jeans, and purple lipstick. Back then, it was easy to pull off that vintage grunge look without breaking the bank.
As Dublin’s cultural landscape blossomed, the economy was undergoing its own transformation. While the lingering effects of the tough, stagnant 1980s – marked by poverty and unemployment – were still felt in the early 1990s, things were beginning to change. By the mid-1990s, multinational companies had arrived, creating jobs and infusing the city with new energy. For students like me, it suddenly felt as though the possibilities for the future were endless.
The author with her friends at Trinity in the 1990s.
Writing The Wildelings allowed me to revisit that time of change and possibility, with a darker twist. The people and events may be fictional, but the spirit of the city is alive within the pages. Looking back, Dublin in those days feels like it belonged to another era, not just 30 years ago. It’s striking how quickly everything has changed, particularly with the rapid advances in technology. We didn’t have smartphones or the internet, aside from a few clunky library computers. There were no social media pressures, no constant comparison. Perhaps that’s what makes me nostalgic – there was a rawness to life, a sense of living in the moment that feels wholly lost now. Many of us could afford to live away from home, a rare luxury for a student in Dublin now.
I waitressed through college and managed to pay rent. Imagine that kind of freedom – being 18, living away from home for the first time, with the city as your playground. There were all kinds of digs, many of them mouldy and mismanaged, but there was so much choice, so many possibilities – unthinkable today.
But nostalgia has its blind spots. Divorce, abortion, and homosexuality were still illegal, shame around our sexuality lingered, and contraception was difficult to come by.
The country had a long way to go toward the Dublin of inclusion and multiculturalism we see today; it was in many ways still a very homogenous, insular place. The X Case tragedy happened in 1992. The last Magdalene laundry didn’t close until 1996. I vividly remember the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1993, and the shocking realisation of how dangerous things had been, and looking around at my friends and thinking how insane it all was. Living through history, you don’t have the context to understand it. We were naïve, isolated in some ways, and blissfully unaware of the power structures shaping our lives. There was no language for consent, no vocabulary for identifying as anything other than cisgender and straight. As a young actress, I had no idea how much I was performing for the male gaze. In college, there was a magazine, all penned by the boys, which categorised new grils as “fillies” and rated them according to their body parts.
Yet, even amidst this repression, there was an undercurrent of change. It was a time of firsts: Ireland’s first female president, Mary Robinson; the opening of Dublin’s first LGBTQ nightclub, The George; and the emergence of female icons like Sinead O’Connor and Dolores O’Riordan. The glittering Mr Pussy’s Café de Luxe opened its doors in 1994, and I remember feeling it was something important, something subversive. Women, especially students like me, had access to freedoms our mothers had never known. We could live away from home, earn money, and choose our futures.
And so, as Dublin pulsed with its contradictions and possibilities, we danced through the haze of a city on the brink of change – naïve, wild, and full of a kind of recklessness that only youth, in its fleeting beauty, can truly understand.
In The Wildelings, I sought to capture that same electric tension of a city caught between innocence and reckoning. The novel, much like Dublin in 1992, is soaked in the intoxicating rush of youth, but beneath the vibrant chaos lies a darker undercurrent – a sense that something vital is being overlooked or ignored. As the city moved toward its own uncertain future, so too did the characters in the novel, struggling with their desires and the ghosts of their pasts.
In that sense, the novel mirrors Dublin itself: a city brimming with contradictions, hope and the inevitable crash of reality. It’s a place where dreams can be both liberating and destructive. And as the city hurtled toward transformation, so too did we, suspended in that beautiful, dangerous space between who we were and who we hoped to become.
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