EXTRACTS ARE NOT GOOD ADVERTISING FOR NOVELS

Snow. So the kids are off school and the baba is off creche. Therefore, no writing for me. Sob. So I blog.

I've been thinking a lot about the fact that extracts do not do justice to novels. Take Emma Donoghue's Room. I read an extract from it online a few months ago and thought, 'Uck'. I hated the lack of definite articles, hated the child's voice. Then my Book Club decided to read it. And I loved it. It's brilliant. The child's voice is authentic, sweet, clever. The story is tense and harrowing and gave me nightmares, but it is also hopeful and well executed.

I heard Claire Kilroy read from her novel All Summer at Cúirt a few years ago. Again, I thought, 'Not for me.' It sounded stilted and repetitive. Maybe it was her reading style. Anyway, always one to give books a chance, I bought and read it. A great book - well written and enjoyable.

As a reader of my own work, I have found reading from the novel a challenge. You have to pick an extract that will give a flavour of the tone of the book without giving away the plot. You don't want to confuse the audience with too many characters or a disjointed scene. It's hard. Every time, before I read from the novel, I panic as to what bit to read, and how much to read.

Short stories are easy to read from - you just pick one and go for it. Poems are simpler again - you get breathing space between each poem, you can mix up the mood with light and dark, funny and serious. The audience engages easier at poetry readings, I find.

Also, let's face it, some writers are simply not good at reading their own work aloud. Annie Proulx read head down, into the page when I went to see her and she made no effort to involve the audience (she's still a heroine, though.) Then, some writers are utterly convincing. I went to hear Ian McEwan read from On Chesil Beach which I found enjoyable but flawed. He read brilliantly from it - he is a seductive reader of his own work.

I guess I've learnt from all this that novels are wholes as much as short stories are wholes and should be judged only as such. Having said that, I am struggling through a novel everyone raved about and thinking 'Why? Why? Why?' as I shove it to one side to read anything else that comes to hand. Not a good sign. And am I qualified to pass judgement on it if I haven't read the whole thing?

BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2010 - IRISH TIMES

I was asked to contribute to this annual round-up, The Books We Loved Reading in 2010, in the Irish Times. These were my choices here. I have now been asked to do two more of these but I can't use the same books, can I?! No, I guess not. Luckily, many books impacted on me this year and each place only wants me to name three or so. The next Best Books features are at the Anti-Room and Horizon. Soon!

INTERVIEW ON ITALIAN SITE

I am interviewed about my books You and Nude by Massimiliano Roveri on the Irish-Italian blog of publisher Querci & Robertson, Italish, here.
We talk about Fintan O'Toole's recent Irish Times article on childhood in Irish literature, e-books and James Joyce, among other things.

SHORT STORY WRITER SEÁN MACKEL - INTERVIEW

Writer and designer Seán Mackel joins me today to celebrate the publication of his first short story collection by Guildhall Press, The River. The book will be launched this Thursday 25th November @ 7:30pm in the Clarendon Bar, Derry. 

Seán held the post of Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design at University of Ulster Magee. After establishing the first Master of Design in the north of Ireland he became a key contributor to the formation of the School of Creative Arts at UU Magee. After over twenty years lecturing in Australia, Germany and Ireland he took early retirement in 2007.

Welcome, Seán. Tell us about your new short story collection The River.

I was a bit of a rascal as a kid. When I told my mother a ‘fiction,’ she would often say to me, “Do you think I came up the river in a bubble?” To be honest I think in a way we all have, if we see life as a river and the womb as a bubble. I was born in the front bedroom of a house on a street called Owenvarragh, from Abhainn Bharrach - barred river, in Belfast from Béal Feirste - mouth of the sandbank.

              Before coming to Derry I lived near other rivers, the Ligoniel in North Belfast, the Swilly in Donegal, and later the Murrumbidgee in New South Wales. In recent years I spent the New Year staying by the Pegnitz in Nürnberg. When I returned from Australia I settled along the banks of the Foyle. No surprise then that the 13 short stories in my collection are thematically linked by a river, in this case the Foyle.

              But in exploring narratives linked by the Foyle, I was influenced by one translation of An Feabhal as ‘estuary of the lip.’ And it was this link between life and language, which intrigued me. So the first story in my collection acknowledges the Irish language as the roots of our imagination. The collection then flows forward from the 1920s, through the 40s, and addressing the Troubles, it continues up to the present day featuring characters from Australia, the Czech Republic, Germany, France and Poland.

              Given our recent history in the North, the title story, “The River”, explores the idea of truth. It is placed at the physical centre of the book. Like the River Foyle itself it has the capacity to divide and, more importantly, to unite.

              But equally in mining the character of a city and a region on the cusp of cultural celebration, I wanted to absorb influences and interests of my own from art, music, writing and performance. Whilst there are stories of history and loss, there are also stories of humour and hope. And in a gesture towards our own instinctive tendency to dream, to imagine something greater waiting for us up ahead; like the title of the last story we are not unlike the river ourselves, “Dreaming of the Sea”.

Why do you write?

Because I also work in the visual field I find my mind is often a jumble of different threads of thought. I think I write as means towards disentanglement. Drawing my thoughts out onto the page or screen helps me see what I think. I find the process of writing to be very similar to sketching, making initial, sometimes tentative gestures towards some semblance of form until the thing itself becomes organic and finds its own shape or voice. The more I write the more I feel the need to. But it’s a strange urge, as though the drive to express, the need to make, has its own agenda.

What is your writing process – morning or night – longhand or laptop?

Like most processes it has adapted with the times. I do still carry a notebook and pen; you can’t beat the immediacy of just putting your thoughts directly onto paper. But I would be completely lost without my (Mac) laptop. The process of writing is so accumulative; word-processing software is an absolute must for saving various versions, copy and paste, restructuring and accessing the web for little bits of logistical narrative detail.

Who is the writer you most admire?

Ciaran Carson, a hugely gifted poet, prose writer, and translator.

Which short story would you like to see on the Leaving Cert?

“Crossing the River” by David Park, is a deceptively powerful story told from the point of view of the oarsman who rows passengers oblivious to their destination, across the river to their afterlife.

What is your favourite bookshop?

Without a shadow of a doubt, it has to be Galway’s Charlie Byrnes.

What one piece of advice would you offer beginning writers?

The receipt of honest feedback is pure gold. Get out there and participate in constructive critical workshops. But be wary of the mutually therapeutic variety, as they tend to feed the ego and not the voice.

The River is available through Guildhall Press from Monday 22 November here.

GRACE WELLS & PAUL PERRY - EYEWEAR REVIEW

I have reviews of poets Paul Perry and Grace Wells new Dedalus collections on Todd Swift's Eyewear site today. Here.

SATURDAY WOMAN POET on POETHEAD

Christine Murray has featured a couple of my poems from Tattoo : Tatú with translations on her Poethead site, in the Saturday Woman Poet slot. There's a lovely image accompanying the poems, by Paddy McElroy. One of the poems Corcracht/Purpling is about grief, specifically about the death of my sister. The poem always reminds me of this time of year as her December anniversary approaches. Thinking of her makes Christmas bitter-sweet, even after nine years. Do we ever truly get over the death of someone we love well?

BBC SHORT STORY SHORTLIST

The shortlist for the BBC Short Story Award has been announced. Winner to be announced next week, I think. This seems to have passed me by somewhat, stuck as I am in a novel-writing and avoiding the net groove. Not that the novel's going anywhere. Yet.
Anyway, the rather excellent David Constantine is on it & they are broadcasting them all this week:

1. Tea at the Midland by David Constantine
2. Haywards Heath by Aminatta Forna
3. Butcher's Perfume by Sarah Hall
4. If it Keeps on Raining by Jon McGregor
5. My Daughter the Racist by Helen Oyeyemi

Jim Naughtie, Chair of Judges, said of this year's award:

"The short story can expose a writer, cruelly. It takes skill to be able to complete the job, and like a miniaturist on canvas who has to work to distil a world into a few square inches the writer who can suggest a great span in a story that has to be kept in check is a true servant of the craft. A short story needs to waste no time. It can't meander, unless the wandering is perfectly controlled and has a hidden purpose. As judges we found in our discussion that although our tastes and stylistic passions are probably quite different, we knew a good one when we saw one ..."

More here.

decomP reviews *YOU*

American literary magazine decomP has given my novel You a fabulous review, written by Dublin-based writer Jessica Maybury. Thanks, Jessica, and the mag's editor Jason Jordan too. Here's a flavour:

"You breaks through the traditionalist stained-glass ceiling with a refreshingly modern and urban splintering and scattering of shards."

Yes! How I love smashing that damned glass ceiling :)

You can read the full review here.

MATTHEW SWEENEY'S DUBLIN LAUNCH

I was in Dublin yesterday teaching a short fiction class to a lovely Tallaght-based writer's group so, as I was up, I stayed up to go to the launch of Matthew Sweeney's Salt published selected, The Night Post, at the Irish Writers' Centre. I'm so glad I braved the high winds and insane city traffic to do just that. It was an intimate event, with enthusiastic punters, and Matthew gave a great reading. Dennis O'Driscoll was there, and Paul Perry; also Gerry Smyth and Mary Noonan.

As you can see from the image above, the book itself is very handsome - Chris Hamilton-Emery at Salt is well known for creating beautiful covers via The Cover Factory. It's a hardback, with red endpapers and it is excellent value - there are 171 pages of poetry in this volume.

Cork poet Aidan Murphy, who has just won the Kavanagh Fellowship, launched the book for Matthew. They were friends in London from 1975 on and were steeped in each other's poetry from the moment they met, both being Irish, both writers, and both experimentalists. Aidan said 'The best poets never grow up' and he admires Matthew's childlike attitude to the world which, I think, manifests itself as a kind of detailed wonder in the poems. Aidan said that as poets he and Matthew were 'trying to get out of Irish ways of thinking, while not wanting to embrace anything English either'. Like all budding friendships based on writing, you could feel the excitement and sparks that were flying among them and their friend Robert Greacen at the time. Aidan said Matthew had a 'wonderful intensity' and, in those days, he would arrive early in the morning, to a sleepy Aidan, waving a new poem, full of excitement.

This book begins with half of a sequence of moon poems (16 poems) that Matthew wrote in those early days in London. Aidan noted that they are 'still lyrically haunting, structurally inventive and fresh'. And they are. I was challenged recently, by another writer, to write a cliché-free moon poem and I used Plath as my bouncing off point. When Matthew read from the Moon Poems he said when he wrote them he was 'riddled with Plath, Berryman and Shelley'. I was buzzing about this and, weirdly, outside over a stormy Parnell Square, there was a fingernail moon in the sky and I was wearing my crescent moon pendant. This is one of the things I love about the world of writing: happenstance - the coincidences, the serendipity and the sharing of themes and motifs.

Matthew said, in the Q&A, 'It's a very, very good thing to be influenced by other poets. It's important.' I agree - where would I be without Eavan Boland, Rita Ann Higgins, Sharon Olds, Sylvia Plath, Kerry Hardie, Eva Bourke et al?

A Matthew Sweeney reading is an event. He's an inventive, compelling reader and he's one of those poets who makes you feel that poetry is important and possible, and that a poem is a place where anything can - or should - happen. His poems are sparky, fascinating and full of mad surprises: there's a horse whose breath smells of Rescue Remedy; and a poet who is exiled to Aberystwyth, where he 'drones' his poems to the gulls.

Go Matthew! You make the world of poetry a much more interesting place. I hope this collection gets all the kudos it deserves.

STINGING FLY REVIEW OF *YOU*

There is a thoughtful, generous review of my novel You in the new Stinging Fly by writer Mia Gallagher (she of the fabulous novel Hellfire).

It's not online but here's a wee flavour: 'Ní Chonchúir's characters jump off the page: arthritic Cora and fat-and-ugly coalman Noel, la-di-dah Auntie Bridget, lumpy, sad Liam. Her language is precise and earthy...she eschews showy descriptions for lived visceral experience.'

I am glowing! Thanks to Mia.

The Fly is the usual mix of poetry and fiction and there's even a graphic story by Kevin Barry illustrated by Alé Mercado. The cover is suitably wintery and in its new bulked up incarnation, the mag feels weighty and looks beautiful. There are plenty of writers I know between the covers: Niamh Bagnell, Grace Wells, Gerard Hanberry etc etc. I look forward to settling down for a good read. (I nearly wrote 'feed'!)

You can buy the mag here.

ÉILÍS NÍ DHUIBHNE - DALKEY ARCHIVE INTERVIEW

There's a good interview with Éilís Ní Dhuibhne here on the Dalkey Archive Press website. She says, among many things:

"As a writer, I tend to believe that I am individual and unique—indeed, every individual work, novel, short story, seems to make its own special demands and to have its own unique characteristics. However, only a fool believes she is not influenced by the writing and traditions of the past, the writing of the present, and the world in which she happens to live."

I so agree with that. It's kind of maddening, because each work is so different, to constantly feel like a beginner when you start a new project, particularly fiction. But there it is. And, though I have struggled with the idea of influence, I know for a fact that I owe a huge deal to writers like Éilís, Edna O'Brien, Eavan Boland, Sylvia Plath etc. etc. I think every writer I meet adds something to my knowledge and understanding of writing and that is brilliant.

When asked if there is a market for literary fiction in Ireland, she responds:

"There is a market for literary fiction. It is not very big and of course prefers good accessible conservative work to anything very challenging, but many people read and there is now a thriving Book Club scene. I think literature is prized and respected in Ireland."

She mentions me - I'm a 'neglected good short story writer'. Woop! That shouldn't make me happy of course (except the 'good' bit). I'm just happy because I am on Éilis's radar at all - I've always loved her writing. If you want to read a stunning short story, read Éilis's 'The Pale Gold of Alaska'. Fabulous.