Content Warning: This section describes depictions of civil warfare, terrorism, and the aftermath of the Northern Ireland conflict (also known as the Troubles), which feature extensively in the novel.

When conceptualizing the events of war, a reader’s tendency might be to imagine the battles, the carnage, notable figures and dates, as well as the casualties. Flynn Berry focuses her narrative on something entirely different in Northern Spy. What she strives to portray is an accurate depiction of mundane life between headline-worthy events—the moments that go unrecorded in history for their banality and quotidian nature. The author shows how it is this inclusion of normalcy in warfare that often carries its victims through to the end by giving them the motivation needed to make it through the chaos and danger.

For Tessa, her role as a mother becomes the touchstone that tethers her through the struggles and violence she faces as she becomes more intimately enmeshed with the IRA. Being an informant is rather antithetical to Tessa’s person: She is a civilian, a single mother, and though she has an invested interest in politics, her career as a news editor marks her as someone who is staunchly on the sidelines of political occurrences—a bystander, in other words, rather than an active participant in Northern Ireland’s conflict like her sister.