Category: Writers Read

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Writers Chat 74: Cauvery Madhavan on “The Inheritance” (Hope Road: London, 2024)

Cauvery, You are very welcome back to my WRITERS CHAT series. Many congratulations on the upcoming September publication of your fourth novel The Inheritance (Hope Road: London, 2024). Your previous novels The Tainted (2020), Paddy Indian (2001) and The Uncoupling (2003) were received with acclaim with Sue Leonard declaring The Uncoupling “a gem of a novel.”

Cover image of The Inheritance showing rows of blue mountains with a white cottage in the middle; below the cottage are layers of green and blue trees in which stand figures of two children, white and blue.

SG: Let’s start with the stunning cover image (shown above) which captures the dual storylines – that of Marlo in 1986 and a child narrator, Coichin, in 1602 – as well one of the main themes running through The Inheritance that creative expression (writing, painting) can provide safe ways to name identity and belonging. Can you talk about the cover image, the design and origin? Did you have input and choice?

CM: I was very lucky to have the same cover designer, James Nunn, who designed the cover for The Tainted, work on the cover for The Inheritance. James read the book and incorporated the physical features of the Beara Penninsula and very cleverly used the two little boys in the story as well. When I saw the design I was so struck with the fact that one of the children was ghostly white and I loved it instantly. My only brief to him had been I wanted a cottage on the cover! So I was really happy at the way he had interpreted the theme of the book. The cover design is hugely influenced by what the sales team think. And as an author you have to trust that they know their business.

SG: Much of The Inheritance explores how the familiar is made strange and how the strange is made familiar through the notion of the outsider – Marlo is brought up in England and moves to rural Cork when he inherits a cottage. Of course, this inheritance is also, as he discovers, as much about identity and home as landscape and place. There’s a lovely scene where Marlo is overcome by the landscape:

He stood for a while letting it soak in then walked to the very large ancient vault, circling it several times, examining the monumental stones placed on top of each other before wandering around the fallen tombs, running his fingers across the weathered slabs, the names and dates ravaged and erased over many centuries. He wondered if he was directly descended from any of the people buried here.

Were these themes important to you as you wrote the novel or did they emerge after you’d written the narrative?

CM: Since I don’t plot my novels more than a page or two ahead as I am writing, I must admit that these themes emerged as I was writing but quite unbeknownst to me. It wasn’t even clear to me till much after I had finished the manuscript, on rereading it and reading the comments from my editor Sue Cook, that I realized landscape and place was so central to the book. I guess that is because I feel that the landscape of Beara is imprinted on my soul and I hardly even knew I was writing about it!

SG: And in a way, that’s what we see in The Inheritance: the landscape of Beara imprinting itself on Marlo’s soul. The dialogue in its unapologetic Hiberno-English stands out and brought out in this reader considerations of language, how we communicate through oral and written words (Marlo), non-verbal language, and through visual art and senses (Sully). Marlo observes, realising how death changes everything:

Imperceptible lifts of the chin and little sideways twitches of the head meant everything when the men had nothing left to say…The women on the other hand were all taking at the same time.

In contrast, Coichin tells us in his narrative – echoing young Sully who also appears mute while also reflecting on how Marlo experiences Beara – “I’ve always been a watcher. What else could you be if you couldn’t speak?” (113).

The Inheritance encouraged me to pause and watch both people and landscape around me…Could you comment on listening and watching in The Inheritance?

CM: Such a fantastic question Shauna. It has made me realize that I am actually a proper watcher myself: a watcher-listener of inflections, in the way language is delivered, silently or spoken. When it comes to language and how it is conveyed Beara is the best teacher. In Beara language is not just speech – it’s the tilt of the head, the shrug of shoulder, a kick of a stone. Of course this is a universal thing with languages but in Beara the subtilties are ever so subtle.

As far as landscape is concerned I have never tired and will never tire of observing what Beara has to offer. I find I drive slowly, walk slowly and whether you’re looking at the grand picture of an entire range of mountains or a little micro world of flora and fauna on a stone wall there is so much to observe and absorb. Every season, the time of the day, your own mood at that moment determines and colours what you see.

And Marlo himself, when he is on the bus and out and about on his business I imagine him to be no different. The landscape, and knowing that some of it belongs to him, definitely has a profound effect on him.

SG: Really interesting connecting the mood with what you see. I loved the humour in The Inheritance which comes out in Marlo’s narrative. I particularly liked the blind calf that Marlo looks after. At one stage he asks himself “Of course, I must the only man in the world who needs to feed a blind calf before a first date.”

Without any spoilers, could you talk about the motif of seeing and not seeing/ knowing and not knowing that this blind calf represents – there are a lot of secrets which stem from shame imposed by a judgemental society and church that emerge in the novel.

CM: A friend of mine, who lives at the very tip of the Beara peninsula, had many years ago told me about a blind calf that she had been allowed to keep as a pet when she was a child. For these last 20 years while I planned and plotted this book I was determined to include a blind calf!

I guess sometimes as a writer you project your own aspirations and expectations on to your characters and for me to love Marlo and be invested in his character meant he absolutely had to love animals.

At the at the back of my mind I was of course telling the story of how disability of any kind was looked upon as something that needed to be hidden and how the trauma of that shame affected even the most loving of families. If you look at the character of Dolores she was in her own way disabled by her sheer physical size as it did not conform to what a woman should look like. So nonconformity is itself viewed as a disability.

SG: Alongside these serious and essential themes, The Inheritance is the story of love. Again, without spoilers could you outline your development – as you wrote the various drafts – of Kitty and her relationship to both her son Sully and new-comer Marlo.

CM: I had initially planned that Kitty would be a kind of modern day female druid into the healing arts and shamanic traditions – someone who Marlo would find fascinating! But very quickly her voice made itself quite clear to me: she was a strong, pragmatic woman dealing with grief by losing herself in the upbringing of her son Sully. Her life was one of practical needs, of how to keep going financially and how to sort out help for Sully. She was not looking for a man in her life. I think outside of the narrative in the book she consults John Bosco and asks his opinion of Marlo. I’m quite certain of this! I absolutely loved the way Marlo fell head over heels for her versus Kitty’s reaction – she considers his interest with greater care – her son comes first!

SG: I love how you know what Kitty did outside of the narrative! Finally, Cauvery, some fun questions:

  • Is Beara your favourite part of County Cork? Not just Cork, in all of Ireland.
  • Forest or mountains? Forest
  • Silence or music when writing? Silence
  • Can you name two books you’ve read over the last year that stand out for you? Christ on a Bike by Orla Owen. Ghost Mountain by Ronan Hession.
  • Wonderful choices! Lastly, what are you reading right now? I’m writing my next book and for it I’m reading historian Ramachandra Guha’s India after Gandhi.

Thanks so much, Cauvery, for your generous answers and I wish you much success with The Inheritance which publishes in September 2024.

Photograph of author Cauvery Madhavan in a colourful patterned blouse looking straight at the camera. Photograph by Ger Holland. Photograph used courtesy of author and photographer.

You can order The Inheritance directly from Hope Road Publishing here.

Thank you to Cauvery Madhavan and Hope Road Publishing for the advance copy of The Inheritance.

Contemplation, Writers Read, Writing Life

On Reading to let writing simmer

I’ve had the fortune of working with some wonderful writers and mentors over the last week or two at The Irish Writers Centre in Dublin. I’m now at the stage where my writing needs to simmer. Writing with feedback. Writing that needs editing. Writing that needs re-writing. It’s always good to have a few projects on the go. Part of this process – for me – is to dive into reading. A few of the books that I’ll be immersing myself in over the next few weeks are pictured below:

  • Fishamble Firsts: An Anthology of First Plays by New Playwrights edited by Jim Culleton (New Island)
  • Good Behaviour by Molly Keane (Virago)
  • This Plague of Souls by Mike McCormack (Tramp Press)
  • The Inheritance by Cauvery Madhavan (Hope Road)
  • A Good Enough Mother by Catherine Dunne (Betimes Books)
Poetry Collection, Writer Interview, Writers Chat, Writers Read, Writing Life

Writers Chat 73: Maeve McKenna on “Body as a Home for This Darkness” (Book Hub: 2023)

Maeve, Welcome to Writers Chat. We’re going to discuss your poetry pamphlet Body as a Home for This Darkness (Book Hub: 2023) which, although a personal tender and moving homage to your late father, is also a consideration on the passage of time and grief. I might add also a congratulations on being placed as a finalist in the 2023 Gregory O’Donoghue poetry prize!

SG: Firstly, tell me about the title which seems to encompass the entirety of the collection – notions of body, ageing, time, belonging, family, and the darkness of grief. In the process of putting the collection together, where did the title come?

MMcK: Thank you, Shauna, for your kind words. Yes, you are right, Body as a Home for This Darkness encompasses all you say of body, ageing, belonging and family and is also a reflection on the loneliness of loss and grief.  Both are constants in life and yet are something we tend to shy away from. The title of the pamphlet came from a haibun poem I wrote four years before my dad passed away. Dad was no longer the man we once knew yet he became the only man we had left and the title spoke to me of that reality and how dementia strips away the very essence of a person.

Cover of Body as a Home for This Darkness by Maeve McKenna (Photograph provided by Maeve McKenna)

SG: Body as a Home for This Darkness opens with the poem “Him” which introduces us, character-like, to your father. I love your use of lists that paint photographic stills of the man, living, giving, enjoying life until his hands are “grey as putty. In ours.” Could you talk a little about the placement of this poem and its formation?

MMcK: It was important to me during the proof-reading and editing process to begin this book with a memory of my father as the man he was before his diagnosis. Dad was a vital man in our world. He was loved dearly, by his family and friends. He was important to so many. While many poems focus on his later life; ten years in the care home as we lost him slowly, my siblings and I remembered our younger lives and the happiness of those times. Dad was a man of his time, the provider who worked hard and never complained, the one we looked to for advice, the person who made everything ok. The poem ‘Him’ attempts to capture and give the reader an insight into the younger man, the father, the worker and the everyday things that made him who he once was.

SG: And I think it captures all of those things about your dear father. Nature features in your collection, as a harbingers of news. In “Rain knows of Waking”, “Blades of grass are scissors wielding tears”, disturbingly (but accurately), “sadness amputates mind from the thinker” until at the end, “raindrops preen in the reflection of your surrender.” You capture something profound about illness and the loss of control. Do you think that when we’re going through events like this that our powers of observation become more focused on the immediate surrounds, that blades of grass, for instance, take on a deeper meaning and significance, and that in writing these experiences into poetry we are already starting the healing process?

MMcK: Nature features in many of my poems. Something about the temporality of nature, how it comes and goes and regenerates itself year after year, allows me to better understand our human existence. An autumn morning spent in a forest observing the acceptance of an oak tree as it slowly retreats and to return there in spring to watch foliage sprout and burst with colour reminds me of life, the brief time we are here and whilst here there is joy but also challenges that we must accept. I am happiest lost in the woods or strolling along a beach listening, touching and absorbing all the elements around me. Of course to write we must observe keenly, and the image you refer to, ‘blades of grass are scissors wielding tear’ came from an early morning walk in late November near the care home as my father entered the last days of his life. I stopped to watch dew rest on blades of grass and they were tears, mine, but this was the order of nature and the blades of grass bore the weight of the dew with stoicism.

SG: Yes, we can take so much from the order of nature. In the devastating “Leaving”, you capture the solitude of grief, where you get lost on the M50 with your family including

three almost/grown children, tight, really tight…fast asleep

leaving you alone in and with your grief, and leaving you to find your way home. In the title poem, “Body as a Home for This Darkness”, we have more movement, of body, of task, of help as well as dropping back into memory and connection.

Once, you made raspberry jelly when my throat/hurt I’ll ask if I can bring you some…

These poems really stuck with me and I’m curious about your stylistic choice of form. Can you talk about this?

MMcK: Poems often choose their own form. I like to experiment with different forms in second or third drafts. In the case of ‘Leaving’, I felt the form I settled on, a justified block of text, allowed the poem to give the sense of claustrophobia I felt that day driving home from my dad’s funeral. It was in lockdown, we were allowed just ten mourners at the funeral and because of restrictions we had to leave immediately after. The loneliness of that journey home, even though my family were with me in the car, will remain with me forever. Similarly, in ‘Body as a Home for This Darkness’, I wanted the poem to appear solid on the page, that the reader would not be distracted by the format. It is a haibun and I wanted the haiku at the end to convey my dad as a younger, working man, a panel-beater and sprayer, who worked so hard to provide for us.

SG: Thank you for such insight into your process, and your terrible grief. The theme of clothes, how they sit on the body, and how we people are mere movements of clothes is threaded through the collection. I’m thinking here of “Listening for My Dad’s Clothes” and “Three Piece Suit in Rome” which ends with the question so many of us have to ask “Which shirt and tie will we bury him in?” Was this intentional or did this theme emerge when you went to put the collection together?

MMcK: A friend who I share work with pointed this out to me after reading a draft copy of the manuscript. I hadn’t noticed it prior to that. My dad was a dapper man, I never saw him in jeans or a tracksuit! He was neat and tidy and always colour coordinated. Subliminally, this came through in the poems. Many readers have remarked on this and I am glad as this sense of my father always being well-groomed would have delighted him.

SG: That’s lovely – as it also reveals something light and yet shows us the care your dad took not only with his family but himself. There is a nostalgia – through the grief – that your poems also capture, alongside the stark reality of death. For example, the sequence of action in “Breathe” that ends with the heartfelt “What sadness/you taught us to count”, or the visceral “Fortuity” or “Unprotected” where your father’s hands don’t know your hands have released his. In the wonderful “I Want To Go Home”, you capture an almost universal desire that many of us feel at some stage, that we want, not just to go “home”, but that we want to go back to the past, or rather a past without difficult feelings, without loss, without the responsibility of death. Have you – or could you ever? – read these poems aloud? I felt tearful reading them with the rawness. 

MMcK: I’ve read ‘I Want To Go Home’ a few times. It is a long prose poem, but is always well received. Audiences seem to like the detail and many have said how the images in the poem resonate with them. As a Dubliner who moved to rural Ireland many years ago, when I visit now I see the city so vividly while also remembering the Dublin of my childhood. And you are right, the poem is about wanting a time that is gone, however good or bad that time was, before the realities of life as we age emerge. I’ve also read ‘Protected’ many times and it is a favourite poem of mine to read. I haven’t read ‘Fortuity’ or ‘Breathe’, two short poems, but look forward to in the future.

SG: We will end with a few light questions:

  • Coffee or Tea? Tea, but no more than two cups a day. Water mostly.
  • Sea or Mountains? Sea.
  • Longhand or straight typing? Both, I write on the hoof in jotters, and at home on the laptop.
  • Cats or Dogs? Dogs. Our two much-loved dogs, Buddy and Pablo passed away in 2020 and 2022. Both aged 15, they had a great and long life. We miss them still.
  • What are you working on now? I am currently working on my first full collection which will be part of my dissertation for the MA in Poetry I am currently undertaking at Queens University, Belfast. I am also exploring a long poem book. I have an early draft of a ten-page poem I would like to develop into a full book.

Thank you for your generous answers, Maeve and I wish you continued healing and much success in your MA in Poetry. I look forward to reading more of your work – especially the full collection, when it is published.

Readers can purchase Body as a Home for This Darkness (Book Hub: 2023) here.

Photograph of Maeve McKenna wearing a patterned dress and smiling holding up a copy of Body as a Home for This Darkness with numerous copies of the book in the foreground. (Photograph provided by Maeve McKenna)