It was one of those images you know you'll always remember and that, if it were photographed, would turn up on the front page of a newspaper - a drunken 14-year-old girl running along a path, still holding her can of beer, and a man with a gun chasing after her. We took living in Northern Ireland for granted but at that moment I saw exactly how it might look to outsiders. Anything is normal when it's all you've known and you have nothing to compare it to.

Laura Canning had always wanted to write about the night she and her friends - a bunch of mischievous 14and 15-year-olds - were caught drinking by the British army.

Her opportunity came when she was approached by Kate Fearon, co-editor of Lurgan Champagne And Other Tales, a page-turning collection of stories by young women about growing up in Northern Ireland.

"I wanted to do something with a different take. Every young person relates to getting drunk outside with their mates," said Canning (26) at the launch in Belfast of the book, part of the Livewire series published by The Women's Press in England.

"I've been wanting to write about it because for me it just summed the whole thing up. You live here and it doesn't bother you at all, but there are wee things like that which make you step outside yourself for a minute.

"Most people just had the police to contend with while out drinking under age. We had the army after us . . . you realise well, yes, this is a bit of a unique society."

`Lurgan Champagne', the title of Canning's story in the collection, is local slang for the notorious tonic wine Buckfast. At the launch, a bottle was placed on the table, but those attending didn't partake. As Canning writes: "The effect of Buckfast is something that can never properly be conveyed to those not from here . . . lethal stuff."

It is almost as difficult to convey the complexities of life in Northern Ireland, but Lurgan Champagne is as eloquent a testimony of life lived through conflict as is available in bookshops. A region normally carved into two neat halves, Catholic and Protestant, is depicted as being far more varied, with richer cultural influences.

Women from both communities, as well as Chinese, Jewish and disabled contributors, share their experiences of snipers and snogging, petrol bombs and childhood pranks.

"You take it for granted," says Kellie O'Dowd, another contributor. "You don't realise until you get older, or maybe travel a bit, that it is not a normal society."

O'Dowd's story, `Truth and Trauma', tells how her grandfather was shot dead when she was a year old and of the effect it had on her family. She blames the subsequent breakdown of her parents' marriage on the stress caused by the murder.

"There was no counselling in those days; you just had to get on with it," she says. "This was my way of putting a line in the sand and saying: this happened to my family, and it is something that has impacted on the second generation, not just the generation who went through it at the time." She found the book "really entertaining". "Some of the stories have you in tears; next minute you are falling over yourself laughing, and that's exactly the experience of being from the North," she says.

It was difficult, says Fearon, who is also political adviser to the Women's Coalition, to find women who had the confidence to write their stories down. "We had to say to them: what you are saying is worth hearing, it is worth publishing, because this is a voice that isn't usually asked for its opinion - and when it is, it just gets lost in all the other voices," she says.

"I hope the book will show people that there is a richness to life here, and there always has been. Even during the Troubles, there was a level of normality where you adjusted to what was going on around you."

Her co-editor, Amanda Verlaque, a journalist, describes the book as "a snapshot of young women's experiences of what it has been like to grow up here, whether directly related to the Troubles or not".

Some are stories from people whose lives were barely touched by the conflict. Stacey, one of the contributors who writes under a first name only, wanted to play football in Portadown but tells how she encountered gender discrimination in a town that normally makes headlines for the religious kind. She now studies business management at the University of Southern Mississippi, where she is on a soccer scholarship.

Another contributor remembers her delight on hearing her school had been attacked. "It's funny what you get used to. Sometimes the Troubles even got you out of things. Like the time our school was petrolbombed . . . I was jumping for joy!

"The Protestant kids used to threaten us, saying: `We're going to burn your school down.' I'd say to them: `Well, this time would you do it right, cos I could do with some time off?' "

Then there `A Cow Of A Neighbour', a surreal tale involving vandalised garden gnomes and a lost calf - no mention of bombs, bullets or politics here.

But there are stories that do more to help the outsider understand Northern Ireland on a human level than weighty history books or intense political analysis. `The Twelfth' is one young woman's explanation of the cultural attraction for Protestants in the summer marching season.

Rebecca writes about how the build-up to July 12th was always an exciting time. "I know people will probably be thinking: `How can you be excited about something that's associated with Drumcree?' "The effect of Drumcree has spoiled things for a lot of people. It's spoiled the magic. For my wee brother, when he was younger, the Twelfth was his day - more so than Christmas."

Rebecca remembers it as a time of festivities, like St Patrick's Day.

"I believe that Orangeism should be kept cultural, because that's what it is. I don't agree with any political party lifting it and using it for their own political means. I find that upsetting," she writes.

The final story in the book, `What Next?', is written by Kate Fearon's younger sister, Bernadette (21). From a staunchly nationalist background in south Armagh, she writes about how her thinking matured after she went away to university.

One politics lecture started a process where she began to question her innate belief that nationalists had "a God-given right to a united Ireland".

"That class was a catalyst that resulted in me challenging my own belief system. Slowly at first, and then with continuing speed, I realised that the glorious struggle was stupid, futile and ultimately tragic.

"I began to realise that my quest for a united land was not worth one drop of blood. That the nationalist and republican way I had revered for so long was merely a farce," she writes.

SPEAKING at the launch, Bernadette Fearon described her former beliefs as lazy thinking. "The only way you can change your thinking is to get thrown in at the deep end, get into arguments, experience other points of view. If you stay in the one place all your life, you usually stay in that place mentally as well," she said.

While some members of her family might not agree with her views, she explained, they have always supported her. The writing experience was difficult at times: "Everyone in Northern Ireland has an opinion about the situation . . . If you take an opinion that's different to what people expect, you really lay yourself bare."

She had also enjoyed the book and said people had given a lot of themselves and been honest about their experiences. "It should make people think twice about their perceptions of Northern Ireland . . . If it only does that, it has achieved its goal."

Lurgan Champagne And Other Tales: Real-Life Stories from Northern Ireland is published by The Women's Press, £4.99 in UK; further information from its website: www.the-womens-press.com