The Rising of the Moon

Returning to Ireland after fifteen years away, Nuala Dennehy finds a society in which she receives a compulsory ID chip, she is denied any birth control devices, and she is assigned a church to which she must report. Original.

This fine first novel tells of feminist revolution in a dystopian patriarchy of the not too distant future. At the center of the story is Nuala Dennehy, who has left her native Ireland to escape legalized subjugation of women and to study and teach Irish history. She returns to find Ireland even worse than when she left, with contraception and abortion outlawed and women completely subordinated to their fathers or husbands. Nuala meets up with the women's underground resistance. After making an appearance on a guerrilla televison station, she draws national attention. She becomes a fugitive, all the while fomenting revolution in places she hides out. Through narrow escapes, imprisonment, torture and jail break, she helps bring Ireland's men and women to the brink of liberation. In Nuala, Connolly has drawn a portrait of a complex, passionate, energetic, intellectual woman who becomes the reluctant leader of a revolution. The characters she surrounds Nuala with are, likewise, well drawn. The story's pace is fast, the situations are dramatic and the resolution is both joyous and tragic.
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