Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses self-harm, suicide, and racist, sexist, and anti-gay language.

Saoirse Aylward is the protagonist of The Queen of Dirt Island. Though this is a multi-vocal novel—different chapters are from the perspective of different characters, including Eileen and Pearl—Saoirse’s is the arc the novel tracks most fully. The first chapter of The Queen of Dirt Island, for instance, concerns the moments directly after Saoirse’s birth, in which her father was killed driving her home from the hospital. Saoirse is characterized as intelligent, introspective, and shy. Saoirse often feels isolated from the other people in her small Irish town because of the circumstances of her birth (her mother had gotten pregnant before she and Saoirse’s father were married) as well as her own teenage pregnancy, partway through the novel.

As the novel progresses, Saoirse changes from a passive and insecure teenage girl to a confident and competent woman. Though initially she doesn’t want to be a mother, Saoirse takes pleasure in mothering her daughter, Pearl. Saoirse’s personality is influenced by her mother, Eileen, and her grandmother, Nana. Her worldview is shaped by growing up in a household of exclusively women.