No news is good news, goes the saying.

But the day at primary school near Belfast begins with prayers and a news bulletin. The news, brought by the pupils, is a bulletin of horrifying events. Killings, shootings, beatings, bombings, riots, hunger and poverty. It is the time of the Troubles , and there’s no respite from the news.

The children are familiar with the vocabulary of wartime, phrases like “boobytrap, incendiary device, gelignite, nitroglycerine” roll off their tongues. 24-year-old Cushla, their teacher and the protagonist of Louise Kennedy’s debut novel Trespasses , is protective of her students, often going the extra mile to protect them from the awfulness of the times in whatever ways she can.

In times of war

The news, of course, does not come on its own two feet.

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