Broken Harbour

Ireland experienced dramatic economic expansion throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, growing from one of Europe’s poorest nations to one of its richest in a relatively short period of time. During this period, called the Celtic Tiger, several factors influenced the country’s growth: foreign investment, in which corporations from other nations moved operations to Ireland due to factors including low taxes and membership in the European Union; deregulation, with minimal government involvement in corporations’ activities; and an English speaking workforce (Peters, Katelyn. “Celtic Tiger: Ireland’s Economic Boom Explained (1995-2007).” Investopedia, 4 Sep. 2025). Most importantly for the context of Broken Harbour, the period saw the construction of over 90,000 dwelling units in 2006, the peak of economic expansion. However, with 2007’s global financial crisis, many of these homes were left unfinished or abandoned, with entire housing developments, like the one in Broken Harbour left largely abandoned, with only a few houses occupied.

When asked about the context of the novel in interview, French noted, “[A] solid proportion of our generation are stuck on half-built, half-occupied, abandoned estates […] no one’s ever going to buy their houses so they can move on. And their belief in […] a world where they have any control over their own lives, has been smashed” (French, Tana. “Broken Harbour Reader’s Guide: A Conversation with Tana French.” Penguin Random House). French included her own experience of the recession in the novel, as she was living in Ireland while writing the novel, from 2009 to 2011. French explicitly connects the housing crisis with people’s belief systems, which aligns with the importance of how the worldviews of the characters—particularly Scorcher, Conor, and Pat and Jenny Spain—relate to the context of economic expansion then recession.