The Women on Platform Two

Starred review from January 1, 2025

Dubliner Saoirse loves her partner but is reluctant to commit to having the child he deeply desires. When she picks up a dropped photo and chases after its owner, the encounter triggers the retelling of the daring actions of an intrepid band of women in the 1970s who risked everything to change the Irish laws forbidding all forms of contraception. Sitting on a train bound for Belfast, narrator Maura tells her own story--a fairytale marriage to a handsome doctor who becomes abusive when she fails to conceive--and the stories of her friends with five, eight, or 10 children who risked their lives with each pregnancy and dodgy home birth. When one friend manages to get contraband condoms, she ignites a firestorm of passion to change the oppressive Irish laws and grant women control of their bodies. VERDICT Based upon a little-known true event, this haunting and emotional story from pseudonymous Anthony, who has published women's fiction under another name, could not be timelier. Women in the United States are not the only ones who must fight to protect personal rights, and this powerful novel will remind readers of the fragility of those freedoms.--Susan Clifford Braun

Copyright 2025 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2024
In present day Dublin, Saoirse is walking off an argument with her fianc� when she ducks into a train station to escape the rain where she sees an older woman carrying a scrapbook boarding a train. When a photo falls to the platform, Saoirse hops on board to return it. The train starts before she can get off and so she finds herself in conversation with Maura, learning the story of the two women in the picture from the Dublin of 35 years before. During that time, birth control was illegal, and many women suffered from too many pregnancies; in the course of the novel, a pregnant 15-year-old dies by suicide, and back-street abortionists perform dangerous operations. Intermingled points of view from Maura and her best friend, Bernie, deftly tell the story of a society dominated by men and the Church. Maura eventually joins a group that, with great publicity, takes the train to Belfast to buy what they can't at home, starting an uprising that ultimately brings change. Based on actual events, this startling reminder of the recent past and its consequences is well worth reading. For all fiction collections.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 15, 2025
An exciting and tender coming-of-age story about friendship, family, and the forces that shaped Irish women's reproductive rights. It's 2023, and Saoirse has left the house after an argument with her boyfriend about whether or not to have children. Wandering the streets of Dublin, she ducks into the train station when it starts to rain. While sitting on a bench, she notices a photograph dropped by a stylish elderly woman as she hurries to catch her train. Intrigued, Saoirse picks up the photo and follows the woman onto the train, which is headed to Belfast. By the time she returns the picture, the train has started moving, and Saoirse winds up staying on it, listening to the woman, Maura Flynn, tell the story of her friend Bernie and the events leading up to the photo that was taken of them exactly 52 years ago. Maura worked as a shopgirl in Dublin in the late 1960s, and was thrilled when the dashing Dr. Christopher Davenport showed up to her counter at Switzers department store and asked to take her to the pictures. Soon after they married, however, his charming demeanor gave way to an uncontrollable temper and the perfect life she had imagined for herself quickly turned into a nightmare. Maura's only lifeline was the other woman in the photograph Saoirse found on the platform: Bernie, a butcher's wife and devoted yet harried mother of three. Together the two friends navigated marriage, family, and the struggles of being women in Ireland in the 1960s and '70s. Bernie and Maura's lives became intertwined with those of other women, including a dressmaker who altered dresses by day and secretly assisted women who didn't want to be pregnant in the off hours. They grew both closer to each other and to the dangers that threatened them in their society. Inspired by Maura and Bernie's story, Saoirse returns to her life in the present day with determination to change it for the better. An inspiring novel about the liberating paths blazed by Irish women.

COPYRIGHT(2025) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 20, 2025
Anthony, a pseudonym for thriller writer Janelle Harris (See Me Not), delivers an immersive intergenerational story about contraception in Ireland. In a frame narrative set in contemporary Dublin, a young woman named Saoirse meets the elderly Maura on a train when she returns a photo that dropped out of Maura’s scrapbook. The photo depicts Maura with her friend Bernie traveling on the same train to Belfast in 1971, and Maura tells Saoirse the story behind it, beginning with the bond she formed with Bernie in 1969, when both women feared getting pregnant. Maura’s husband, a respected physician, physically abused her, and she worried he would beat their children, too. Meanwhile, Bernie had recently learned that a pregnancy could be fatal. Contraception was illegal in Ireland at the time, and Maura details how Maura and Bernie united with other women seeking to take control of their lives, leading to a memorable train journey to Belfast (the one depicted in the photo) to obtain birth control. It’s an illuminating story of self-determination, and Anthony capably conveys how Maura’s courageous actions resulted in Saoirse enjoying freedoms unavailable to women half a century earlier. Readers will be drawn to this impactful narrative. Agent: Hannah Todd, Madeleine Milburn Ltd.