Irish Women in Literature event

I'm reading at this free 2 day Irish Women in Literature event at Strokestown Park, Thursday 5th October. All welcome!

MARTINA DEVLIN - ABOUT SISTERLAND - INTERVIEW

I used to think I didn’t like futuristic novels but I’ve lately been blown away by two: Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel and About Sisterland by Martina Devlin, published by Dublin literary imprint Ward River Press. I’m delighted to welcome Martina to the blog today to talk about her book.

Author Martina Devlin

About Sisterland is an atmospheric, thoughtful, intriguing look at the pitfalls of gender dominated society, in this case, a world ruled by women. There is nothing usual about this book, especially in an Irish context where we are obsessed with our very Irishness. The characters in About Sisterland have a whole other set of land, geography and identity questions to grapple with.

Martina was born in Omagh and makes her home in Dublin She has had nine books published; other novels include The House Where It Happened, a ghost story inspired by Ireland's only mass witchcraft trial, and Ship of Dreams, about the Titanic disaster. Prizes include the Royal Society of Literature's VS Pritchett Prize and a Hennessy Literary Award, while she was twice shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards. A current affairs commentator for the Irish Independent, she has been named columnist of the year by the National Newspapers of Ireland. Martina is vice-chairperson of the Irish Writers Centre.

Welcome, Martina. It’s a pat and, sometimes, unwelcome question to ask a writer, so apologies in advance, but where did this novel spring from?

From two sources. First, because I grew up in the North of Ireland during the Troubles, where I observed how two communities led separate lives (not educated together, not living in the same areas) which created the space for extremism to put down roots. I’m not suggesting that everyone saw the other side as entirely ‘other’ and separate, but the potential was there. Second, from reading the work of a groundbreaking social activist and feminist, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She wrote an extraordinary short story – ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ – about postnatal depression long before it was acknowledged as a condition. But what helped to inspire About Sisterland was her novel, Herland, written 100 years ago and serialised in a magazine she published. It imagines a world ruled by women – a utopia. There are no negatives. I mulled that over, and reached the opposite conclusion because women are people and people are never perfect. Least of all when they lay claim to it. I combined those ideas with a pet hate which is ‘isms’ and decided to look at extreme versions of some isms including fundamentalism and feminism.

The novel unfolds effortlessly but at a great pace. As a writer who doesn’t plot much I am always curious about other writers’ approach to plot. Can you talk a little about building About Sisterland?

I don’t plot much either. It doesn’t work for me. I begin with a character who interests me, and consider the potential journey he or she might make; also, I have a broad outline in my head of what a prospective novel might be about – some themes I’d like to explore. And then I leave myself open (hopefully) for inspiration to shape the novel once I’m immersed in the writing process. With this book, more than any other I’ve written, I saw pictures unfurl in my mind like petals opening to the sun. I had a very clear image of a harmonious and beautiful yet fundamentally dreadful (because totalitarian) society. Some of it came quickly once I began to write: the emphasis on controlling emotions which leads to rationing; the segregation of the sexes which helps to bring about the breakdown of the family unit; the communal child rearing for indoctrination purposes; the use of memory control to impose conformity. But other elements were more gradual and only emerged from draft after draft, such as how and why fantasy would be allowed in matingplace. I was never entirely sure how the novel would end while I was writing it.

Concrete naming is important in About Sisterland and everything, from people to places to procreative sex, are named with flair and imagination; you write about babyfusion (pregnancy), moes (emotions), Himtime (sex for conception) and many more brilliantly conceived terms. How did you approach the crucial business of naming things?

Language is fluid so I thought it likely that many of today’s familiar terms would be replaced in a future society. Once I began, it was a lot of fun for me. I’ve always liked to make up words anyhow. This gave me carte blanche. Babyfusion was the first term I invented, and I intended it both as a positive and negative. It plays with the idea of the child and mother (or source, as I call her) being combined until birth, with the utter dependendcy of the unborn child. But I wanted to suggest an unusual relationship between the two in Sisterland, due to the highly stratified society, and fusion has a word association with nuclear fusion and the negative implications of the atomic bomb. Lia Mills, who read an early version, suggested ‘meet’ to me for men chosen to mate because it suggests ‘meat’ which dehumanises the men. As, indeed, Sisterland does dehumanise them.

I kept thinking about celebrity culture as I read the book, as much as about the patriarchy. Was the revering of celebrities on your mind as you wrote?

Not initially, but as the book took shape it began to occur to me – in the sense that human beings seem to need to invent deities. Humankind alone is rarely enough for people. And celebrities have certainly acquired godlike status in today’s society. We iconise people who are important to our culture. I was also thinking about how information is manipulated, Magdalene laundries, what happens when the oppressed become the oppressor, asylum seekers, and how women around the world are denied education and persuaded or forced to cover themselves in public. In Sisterland, it’s the men who are illiterate and obliged to cover up. Dermot Bolger made me laugh recently. He said: “How on earth do you women treat men in Omagh?” That’s my hometown. But, of course, Sisterland is nowhere and everywhere.

Lia Mills interviewed me last year and began with the bald question ‘Why are you a writer?’ It’s a good question so, Martina, why are you a writer?

I think of myself as a storyteller rather than a writer and that applies to whatever kind of writing I’m doing, whether a newspaper column, radio essay, short story or novel. As to why I’m a storyteller, it’s because I grew up hearing stories from my parents. Whenever I think back to my childhood I hear their voices telling me about Cúchulain and other Celtic legends, or the stories from their own childhoods, or ghost stories. There were a lot of ghost stories by the fireside! The oral tradition was very strong, though we all read a lot as well. Libraries are my favourite place. I owe a great deal to them.

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

Morning is best, even though I don’t think of myself as a morning person, and I write on a laptop. My cat Chekhov seems to enjoy hearing my fingers click on it and always positions himself in whichever room I’m working. He gives the appearance of snoozing while I work – but if I stop he opens his eyes and looks disapproving. He’s a very elegant slavedriver.

Who are your favourite women writers and why?

Brace yourself, it’s a long list. Jennifer Johnston, Margaret Atwood, Maria Edgeworth, Sarah Waters, Hilary Mantel, Catherine Dunne, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Joyce Carol Oates, Emma Donohoe, Marilynne Robinson, Christine Dwyer Hickey, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Taylor, Virginia Woolf. I’ll stop now, although there are more. What they share in common is an ability to transport the reader to the time, place or situation they write about. In addition, I admire the way some of them switch genres from one book to the next – either because they choose not to be defined by genre or because they allow the story to dictate the genre.

What one piece of advice would you offer beginning writers?

Don’t write for the market. Write the kind of book you’d like to read. Even if you think it’s beyond your ability, stretch yourself and reach for that.

You are very diverse as a writer: you’re a journalist and your last novel before this was historical fiction. If it’s not too cheeky to ask, what can we expect from you next?

The journalism only takes up one day a week – it’s a toe in the water rather than all-consuming – an arrangement which allows me time and space for novels. In particular, I love historical fiction, especially the research – currently I’m spending a lot of time in Dublin’s National Library delving into the 1500s. The Pearse Library in Dublin is another useful resource. But it’s early days yet. Sometimes I walk away from projects after a period of research if the story doesn’t take shape in my mind. However, I do have a strong female character, an outsider, whose voice is becoming clearer to me every day. So fingers crossed.

Wishing you all the luck (and sales) in the world with About Sisterland, Martina. It’s a wonderful novel. Readers, you can buy it here, currently on sale for just €12.99.

LIA MILLS INTERVIEW

Dublin author Lia Mills’ third novel Fallen is out this Thursday from Penguin Ireland. It is a beautifully written narrative about grief, sister-love, loyalty, and family and its uneven nature.

Katie Crilly’s beloved twin brother Liam is killed on the Western Front. While trying to come to terms with her loss, Katie is confronted with a very real war on her own doorstep, as well as the internal war in her family precipitated by Liam’s death.

Anne Enright says, 'Lia Mills writes superbly about the human heart.' And so she does. I'm honoured to have Lia here at my blog ahead of publication day.

Lia Mills - portrait by Mark McCall

Welcome, Lia. Fallen is set in a Dublin which is being convulsed by the Easter Rising while in Europe WW1 is also taking place. What attracted you to this time period?

In a former life, I did a lot of research into the literary and social history of that period, it’s fascinating.  It was a time when Irish men and women seemed to be intensely alive and engaged, looking forward as well as back, eager for change … My interest was in re-discovering forgotten Irish women writers.  It’s strange – no matter how often we ‘discover’ the role of women in civic and artistic life at that time, the impression doesn’t seem able to get traction in the public mind.  We have the Rosie Hackett bridge now, and that’s great, but it’s depressing to hear young people say we must find out more, now that we’ve learned about these women we mustn’t forget …  it’s like reinventing the wheel every time.

The Rising is our version of a foundation myth. It’s a brilliant story, with all the right ingredients: the few against the many, the brave against the powerful, thrilling speeches from the dock and across open graves, romance, betrayal, sacrifice.  As I was growing up I loved the story, what child wouldn’t?  But it bothered me that the city of Dublin – my city – got bad press.  As usual. 

I used to think my family had nothing to do with the Rising because my parents were of that ‘Whatever you say, say nothing’ generation.  Then I realized that both sets of grandparents were living and working right on the edge of the fighting: my mother’s family on Parnell Street, with the Briitsh Army camped outside their door; my father’s family on Merrion Row, with the British Army camped outside THEIR door.  I began to ask myself what that must have been like, when all hell breaks loose on the streets of your city and you don’t know what’s going on or where it will end.  The novel is set in the past but it’s a relevant, contemporary question.

For me it was wonderful to see the Rising from the POV of a young woman, Katie Crilly. It gave a fascinating view of both the events and of Dublin. In fact, female relationships are to the fore in the story as a whole. Was it important to you to have a female protagonist? Talk to me about her friends, Dote and May – are they based on real activists of the time?

Katie was there from the beginning. Liam and Hubie came later but in many ways it’s their story as much as hers. She’s the one who gets to tell it, but Liam’s voice comes through in letters and Hubie talks a lot.

A lot of women lived together then, as Dote and May do. It was a way of getting out from under their families without giving scandal, and of pooling scant resources. They’re not based on any particular women, but Dote is linked to the suffrage movement, for example, while May’s family is more Anglo, with a military tradition and links to India etc. There are real historical figures in the novel, but they only have walk-on parts.

There is a great sense of Dublin being taken over in the novel; of the weirdness and menace that that entailed. What form did the research take for that very vivid, threatening atmosphere in the city?

That started in Paris!!  It was the strangest thing.  I was plodding along with a draft, but it was quite sterile and I was unhappy about it when I arrived in Paris to start a residency in the CCI.  My arrival coincided with the anniversary of the liberation of Paris and everywhere I looked there were plaques and memorials and flowers to named individuals and events.  Remembering the wars seemed part of the fabric of the city and it jolted me out of my complacent sense of the Rising as a neat, almost clinical event with a logical and proper outcome.  I spent my time in Paris wandering around graveyards, looking at memorials and reading about Irishmen who fought in the Great War and getting angry on their behalf.  Furious, actually. The artist Gail Ritchie was there at the same time, and she was working on memorials too. We spent hours talking about history’s many forms of amnesia.  So you could say that the graveyards of Paris started it.

That’s when I found the novel’s pulse.  For research I read – a lot.  Contemporaneous accounts, historical accounts of the war and the Rising; contemporaneous novels  for a sense of how people used language.  I went to the Imperial War Museum in London and read original diaries and letters. I spent a fair amount of time in Collins Barracks, too.  And there’s a brilliant WWI website: http://firstworldwar.com/  But I also spent time walking around Dublin, visiting sites that feature in the novel (and plenty that don’t feature in it any more).  I spent a lot of time looking at photos of the period – two books I’d recommend are Christiaan Corlett’s Darkest Dublin and Catriona Crowe’s Dublin, 1911.  The National Library has a fantastic collection online as well: http://www.nli.ie/

Do you enjoy research?

A little too much.  Research is the guilty secret of this kind of writing.  You’re stalking a subject through time.  It’s like the hours you lose following a thread online, but a lot more fun.  The thrill of the hunt, of finding something fresh, sparks new connections in your mind and sets all your synapses popping ...  it could go on forever.  That’s the problem. At some point you have to call a halt.  In the end I’d accumulated too many details and impressions, they threatened to choke the novel to death.  You have to know when to stop and that’s never been my strong point, with anything.

There are some gorgeous details in the book. For instance a weird and wonderful insight into the Wellington Monument which I am dying to know if you invented or if it’s true. I was also fascinated by Paschal the monkey who looms large in the book and provides levity from the difficult events taking place. Where did he come from?

Someone told me the Wellington Monument story years ago and it stuck.  I don’t actually know whether it’s true or if it’s an urban legend, or a myth-trap for tourists. There are other rumours about it – a secret staircase inside, a vault, a haunting.  I didn’t care whether it was true or not, the story was too good to waste. The way Dote tells it, it’s not entirely clear whether she believes it herself.  It’s a test, for Katie.  Paschal is a bit of a test too.  As soon as he appeared I knew I had to have him. People did keep monkeys as pets  – One of my mother’s sisters once told me that my mother had been immune to my father’s charms until he gave her a monkey to win her over – Paschal became something of a touchstone in the novel; he represents something vital in Katie.  You can tell a lot about the characters by how they respond to him.

Katie meets Liam’s war buddy Hubie and from him she learns more about her brother and about the realities of being on the Front. Their dealings with each other are at once spiky and warm. They are two strong-minded but also, at this period, needy characters; was it tricky to find a balance in writing their relationship?

Is it balanced?  I’m not sure.  They are both quite difficult, each in their own way, but the more difficult they became the more real they were. They are both damaged.  The question of how to live is acute for both of them. I don’t want to say too much here.  I don’t mean to be coy, but I don’t want to give too much away, either.

Historian and author Clare Wright spoke recently about ‘The Dick Table’ – the space in book shops given over to men’s books, usually non-fiction about ‘male’ topics (war, sports etc.). She has written a book about goldfields and says it does not appear on The Dick Table purely because she is a woman (she moves it there!). You have written about The Rising and WW1. Do you think it likely your book will be positioned beside, say, Sebastian Barry et al? Would you like it to be? (Link here to article).

The Dick Table?  That’s brilliant.  I suppose we’ll have the Mick Table next? I want Fallen to be wherever readers will find it. I could say that I’d like it to be near the cash register, but people would disapprove and think I’m shallow and grasping so maybe I won’t say that.  Oops.  But it IS a very real issue. Someone should start a survey like the VIDA statistics, charting how books are positioned in shops and how sales are affected.  My last book, In Your Face, was a memoir of illness and I don’t think any two bookshops had it stocked in the same category.  In some it was shelved under Health, others had it in Self-Help and one had it with the New Age books.  No one could ever find it!

You write non-fiction as well as novels. How do you find the writing of memoir vs novels? Which is your preferred form?

I write short stories too.  It depends on the story, and the context: what’s the most effective way to tell it – or to explore an idea? Memoir is easier because you don’t have to make anything up.  But then you have ethics (and sometimes legalities) to deal with.

Why do you write?

It’s a physiological thing for me, like breathing. It’s the best way I know to experience what it is to be alive in the world, to be human.  If that sounds grandiose I’m sorry, it’s just the truth. I don’t mean that I think everyone should write, or even that I think writing is any better or any worse than other things that people do with their lives, I just know that it’s my thing and I have to do it.

A more moderate reason is that I’ve been an obsessive reader from a very young age.  The world behind the lines was absolutely real to me then and still is.

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

Sometimes I think I’m writing all the time, even when I’m asleep – I get great ideas and solutions in the middle of the night. I keep a notebook by the bed and scribble in the dark.  It’s annoying when you wake up and see that you forgot to turn the page and the best idea you’ve ever had has been completely overwritten and you’ve no-one but yourself to blame.  Writing has different phases, too – it’s more varied than people realise.  And there’s a surprising amount of admin. I teach as well, which is fun but time-consuming, with recurring deadlines that have a horrible knack of coinciding with times when your need to immerse yourself in your own fugue is at its most intense. My best writing time is very early in the morning.  I’m a bit insomniac, and instead of fighting it I like to get up early and start to work before anyone else is awake. But the dogged hours I put in later can be productive too.  What often happens is that I’m getting ready to quit for the day but if I make myself stay on and just try to loosen one single knot, something unexpected will open up and I get a few extra hours. 

I move between laptop and desktop and I always have a notebook on the go.

Who are your favourite women writers and why?

Oh god, I really hate this question. Partly because I never know where to start or where to stop. I owe so many writers of both sexes a debt of gratitude for hours of pleasure or flashes of insight, I could go on all day and mean every word.  Another reason I hate the question is that so many of my friends are good writers – seriously good, world-class writers, but it feels a little incestuous to say so.  So I leave my generation of Irish women out of these appraisals, with apologies.

I tend to love individual books rather than writers, if you know what I mean.  For example, I’m not mad about her fiction but I truly love and still enjoy Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own.  Edna O’Brien, for A Pagan Place. Tillie Olsen, for Silences. Fay Weldon.  Margaret Atwood. Toni Morrison. Muriel Spark. Molly Keane’s late novels.  Clare Boylan’s Holy Pictures.  AS Byatt’s Possession. Elizabeth Strout.  Hilary Mantel. Janet Malcolm’s non-fiction. Claire Tomalin’s biographies.  Sylvia Plath. Katherine Mansfield, Flannery O’Connor, Lorrie Moore, Deborah Eisenberg. Mavis Gallant.  Isak Dinesen. Joyce Carol Oates & Lydia Davis … See what I mean?  Someone has to stop me.

What one piece of advice would you offer beginning writers?

Choose it. Just step up and begin. Do it – and keep practising until it becomes so much a part of you that you can’t imagine not doing it.  I wish I’d known this one simple thing years ago, I’d have saved myself a lot of grief and wasted time. If it’s what you want but you’re doing other things instead, ask yourself why and how to change it.  This is your real, your actual life you are living, it’s not a trial run. If there’s something you want to do, then it’s up to you to make the move and do it, otherwise it won’t get done. It’s as simple – and as hard – as that. 

What are you working on now?

I’ve been working on short pieces since Fallen left my desk last October. I’m enjoying the rhythm of finish, send, move on; finish, send, move on – it’s good for the soul after the years that Fallen took to finish. The rights of my last novel, Nothing Simple, reverted to me last year and I’ve decided to reissue it as an e-book. The process of getting it ready has been instructive.  It’ll be available online soon.  And I took part in a playwright mentoring programme with Fishamble at the Pavilion Theatre in Dun Laoghaire this year – it’s winding down now, we had a Showcase performance, of short plays and extracts, last week. Now I need to finish writing the play. I’m working on a commission to write a short story for DLRCC, and there are other short pieces lined up behind that one. The blog has been active recently too. A question I need to get to grips with is: given the amount of time it takes, is the blog justified? Oh, and I’ve been teaching on the MFA in Creative Writing Course in UCD, so I’m reading a lot and meeting students to give feedback – that goes on through the summer. Meanwhile, I’m sifting through ideas for the next long project, which I hope to start in October. 

Wishing you all the luck (and sales) in the world with Fallen, Lia. It’s a beautiful, insightful novel. Readers, you can buy it here.

Thanks a million, Nuala. And I’m looking forward to your own next novel, Miss Emily – do you have a publication date for it yet?

Oh, a question for me! Yes, June 2015 for Miss Emily, all going well. Final draft went to Penguin on Sunday. Yay!

WOMEN WRITERS ON WOMEN WRITERS

Valerie Trueblood

For International Women's Day on Saturday, New Island Books asked some of its women writers to talk about the women writers they love. The feature is here.

These were my picks (I forgot to mention Emily D. And Lorrie Moore. And so many more. We were only allowed five...)

Flannery O’Connor: I love Flannery for her humour, colloquial language and violence. I love her flawed, petty characters and the mad things they say.

Anne Enright: Anne is a genius at depicting relationships, broken and flawed. She has a truly fresh way of exploring what it means to be Irish.

Emma Donoghue: I admire her intelligence, exuberant use of language and broad subject matter. You never know what you’re going to get with Emma, in terms of theme or setting, and that’s cool.

Valerie Trueblood: I discovered Valerie through the Cork Short Story Festival. Her stories are so humane and beautifully written, and she knows how to enter and exit in exactly the right place.

Edna O’Brien: Brave Edna, to whom ‘language is sacred.’ I love her; I’ve probably been reading her longer than any other writer. She is so sincere, so subtly funny. Someone rightly said, ‘If we didn’t have Edna O’Brien, we’d have to invent her.’

MARY MORRISSY INTERVIEW

Writer Mary Morrissy

Happy new year, blog readers. I wish you all creativity and prosperity in 2014. I want to kick the year off as I mean to continue: featuring fabulous writers. I am delighted to start this first day of the year with one of my literary heroines, Mary Morrissy. Her new novel The Rising of Bella Casey is published by Brandon and it is a re-imagining of the life of playwright Sean O'Casey's sister Bella. The novel is beautifully written and moving; one of my top reads of 2013.

Mary is originally from Dublin and has won many awards for her fiction. She is the author of three novels, Mother of Pearl, The Pretender and The Rising of Bella Casey, and a collection of short stories, A Lazy Eye. She has taught creative writing at university level in the US and Ireland for the past decade and is also an individual literary mentor. She currently teaches on the MA in Creative Writing at University College Cork. Mary blogs here.

*

Welcome, Mary. Your novel The Rising of Bella Casey has been well received, gaining excellent reviews in The Irish Times and on RTE's Arena programme, among other places. Tell me about the genesis of the book.

Thanks, Nuala, for the invite to appear on your blog. I first came across Bella Casey’s story in The Glamour of Grammar, an academic book on Sean O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy, by Colbert Kearney – who also happens to be my better half. He made reference to Bella’s life and the fact that O’Casey had written his sister out of his autobiographies. I can still remember the moment, and that special tingle you get when you recognize the spark that will ignite your next novel.

A novel like this takes a lot of research. How did you enjoy the research process and how did you conduct it?

I started off by reading O’Casey’s six volumes of autobiography, as well as his three volumes of letters.  I also read the many biographies of the playwright. I was lucky enough to be awarded a research fellowship at the Cullman Centre for Writers and Scholars at the New York Public Library, where a lot of O’Casey’s papers are held, including fragments that he cut from his autobiographies regarding Bella. Because I was surrounded by so much research material at the NYPL, I approached Bella in a different way. Usually I write first, then do the research; this time I did the research first. Normally I don’t like research but you couldn’t possibly not enjoy working at the haven that is the NYPL.  

I learnt a lot reading the book – I wasn’t aware that Seán O’Casey was a Protestant, for example. What is the novelist’s responsibility to the truth, especially when there are real people involved?

Protestantism is crucial to understanding O’Casey – and Bella – if only to understand how far O’Casey travelled from his roots. Here’s a man who became a nationalist, Irish speaker, socialist, communist and atheist and who wrote in complete opposition to his own tribe. As for responsibility to the truth, I think what the novelist should be most concerned with is emotional truth. I have a rule of thumb about writing about real people – which I’ve done a lot of. Where the facts are known you should stay faithful to them; where they’re not you are free to invent.

I loved Bella. Her fall from grace – though she always retained a pretence of dignity – was hard to witness. Were parts of the novel difficult to write, in an emotional way?

It was all difficult to write! This novel had a long, hard genesis. But there were times when I felt a little like O’Casey in dread of Bella’s decline. I wasn’t just witnessing the decline but actively subjecting her to all sorts of trials and tribulations. But apart from the attentions of the wicked Reverend Leeper, which is speculative on my part, all of Bella’s other misfortunes were true, so I had to stay true to them.

Reverend Leeper is a convincing villain; Bella’s husband is also not an endearing man. And Seán comes off as self-focused and lacking in empathy. Is this essentially a book about gender and women’s lack of choice?

Well, I’m glad to hear that the Reverend Leeper is convincing as he is the only one of the  main characters in the novel who is totally invented. (O’Casey mentions in passing in his autobiographies a reverend at Bella’s school who was demanding, but it is not specified in which way; this provided me with a narrative opening to create Leeper.) Bella’s husband, Nick, is brutish but I hope that readers might feel some empathy for him given that he, too, is trapped by circumstances. O’Casey was what we would consider very judgemental about Bella’s fall from grace but you have to remember he was an Edwardian man with the morals of that era. My feeling about his rendering of Bella in his autobiographies is that he adored his sister and when he wrote about her he was fuelled by a savage disappointment in how her life had turned out. There’s no doubting that the novel is feminist in that it focuses on the plight of a well-educated young woman who can’t save herself because of the society she finds herself in. But I like to think it’s also about the men in that society who were similarly ensnared by lack of education and poverty. 

     

The cover, which is lovely, shows Sinéad Cusack in the 2011 Abbey Theatre production of Juno and the Paycock. Did O’Casey base Juno on Bella?

The photograph by Mark Douet is beautifully atmospheric, isn’t it? I can’t say for sure that O’Casey based Juno on Bella – I think it more likely that O’Casey’s mother, to whom he was devoted, was the model for Juno. But there are certainly elements of Bella in the younger female characters in O’Casey’s plays. Take Mary Boyle, for example – an idealistic young woman whose ambitions are dashed when she finds herself pregnant. Nora Clitheroe’s romantic notions in The Plough and the Stars owe something to Bella, and Susie Monican in The Silver Tassie has some of Bella’s haughty high-mindedness. And Bessie Burgess in The Plough as the sole Protestant in the tenement could well have been a nod to Bella in her later years.

The language of the book is fantastic – a lively Dublinese peppers the pages. Did you have fun recreating the bawdy, colourful language of early 20th Century Dublin?

I picked up a lot of the vernacular of the novel from O’Casey’s plays, the tone in particular. For Bella, I used a more formal diction and ran fragments of Shakespeare through her speech to indicate her schooling and her cultural aspirations. That was less of a stretch since my own parents would frequently smuggle Shakespeare into their everyday conversation and it took me years to realise where those quotations came from. 

Why do you write?

Because I can’t not.

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

First draft in longhand and late afternoon into the night. I was a night worker for years and I still keep those kind of hours.

You write short fiction as well as novels. How do you find the writing of shorter vs longer work?

I found the transition from short stories to the novel really difficult. After years of compressing language and time, as the short form demands, it was a real struggle to maintain a narrative over 250 pages. Now after writing several novels, I find that my stories are much longer than they used to be.

Who are your favourite women writers and why?

Carson McCullers and Flannery O’Connor because I found them in my teens and they excited my passion for fiction. Alice Munro for the density and complexity she has given the short story form. Elizabeth Hardwick and Shirley Hazzard for the way they wield language. 

What one piece of advice would you offer beginning writers?

Write a little and often.

What are you working on now?

I’ve just finished a collection of linked short stories and have started work on a new novel – but it’s too early to talk about it.

Thanks so much to you, Mary, for the interview. Readers, you can buy Mary's wonderful novel here. And check out her blog for lots more interesting insights into the book and its making.