I've lived in London for three years. I hadn't spent much time in Britain before my arrival and had no particular feelings toward the English. I expe… - Megan Nolan

Almost as soon as I began, I was lost. The idea of getting up each day and going to class, of learning over and over again that I was stupid, and crass, and incompetent, did not seem doable. It hadn't occurred to me that I was there to learn, to become less stupid. I felt I had failed already, fumbled the opening pass. I had arrived to university quite mad already and quickly became exuberantly so, drinking litres of gin by night and lying in bed, shaking with fear, all day long.
It wasn't laziness, exactly, that stopped me trying to work, but that fear. It lay immobile on my chest. All of Dublin, but especially Trinity, felt corrupted by some malign force that I couldn't break through.

Part of what I find depressing about England is that, rather than being upset with the wider forces that make your life horrible, you're encouraged to look at your neighbour like, 'He's making £10 too much a week on his benefits, and I'm going to report that f***er'.
When I read a tabloid occasionally, I feel that being stoked — you're supposed to hate someone who has a tiny bit more than you to avoid having to look at why you don't have enough for yourself.

It is, sadly, not unheard of for the mother of an abuse victim to side with a romantic partner who is the child’s abuser. Sometimes this expresses itself as blanket denial even in the face of clear evidence, sometimes it is a grim choice born of financial dependence on the abuser, and sometimes it is a consequence of being another victim of the abuser's violence. What is striking, and frankly repellent, about Munro's decision to stand by Fremlin is how lucid it appears to have been, and without any material necessity driving it. Rather it seems to have been a choice made for reasons that are sentimental in a ghastly sense – because she couldn't bear to be alone, to leave this man she loved.