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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.

Writer Interview, Writers Chat

Writers Chat 71: Brian Kirk on “Hare’s Breath” (Salmon Poetry: Galway, 2023)

Brian, Welcome back to Writers Chat. This time we’re talking about Hare’s Breath your latest collection published by Salmon (2023). It’s a collection that deserves to be read with care – as much care as you clearly put into the language in the poems and the shape of the collection – and one that rewards the reader with each re-read.

Cover of Hare’s Breath featuring a drawing of a hare (cover image artwork by Rosaleen Fleming)

SG: Let’s begin with the title poem, “Hare’s Breath”, which explores the process of living and that of creating. You wrote an early draft when you were resident in Cill Rialaig. It seems without that residency, that poem would not have been written – the landscape, literally, provided you with the theme, the images, and a way (back?) into your creative self. I’m thinking of the opening lines: “I came here to work/but needed to stop.” Could you tell us more about the writing of this poem?

BK: It’s so good to be invited back to Writers Chat, thanks, Shauna. Yes, the poem “Hare’s Breath” came relatively late to the collection and went on to provide the title, so it’s an important poem for me. I was in Cill Rialaig last February ostensibly to work on the first draft of a new novel. I was very much concerned with word count and making progress which is not always a good idea. I did do some work on other poems I was writing at the time while I was there too, but this poem came from my daily solitary walks up Bolus Head. I love walking and the landscape there is so beautiful and isolated. On one of my first walks, I encountered a hare and each day after that I would go looking for it, but only saw it again briefly on one occasion. The poem as you say is about creativity or inspiration – where art or writing comes from and how difficult it can be to grasp it and hold on to it in the world we live in now that is so full of distractions.  

SG: As with your previous collection, After The Fall, the main themes in Hare’s Breath are relationships – with family, friends, self, creativity – and time. But here it feels that you’re casting your internal eye back and focusing on the formation of a genetic line in time and place that time changes. I’m thinking of “Kingdom”

….we didn’t lick it off the ground…But we grew up and let him down…dreaming another kind of life outside the fortress that he built from duty, faith and love…His kingdom didn’t last. No kingdom does.

This is also seen in the pairing of “Belturbet Under Frost” and “Googling My Parents” which are beautiful love songs to the past. There’s an emotional weight in these poems which draws the reader back again to re-read. Could you comment on these poems?

BK: I think the past will always be a repository of ideas for me. In After The Fall I had some poems about my parents, but I think I approached them in an oblique way. In “Leave-taking” the picture of a dying father are mediated through the memories of an older brother while I was away living in London. In “The Kitchen in Winter” my mother is conjured from the memory of repeated winter mornings in the place where she held sway. In Hare’s Breath there is more of a sense of celebration of their lives I hope, certainly in the sonnet ‘Belturbet Under Frost’ which re-imagines the beginnings of their love. In poems like “Kingdom” and “Windfall” my father is portrayed as a man of his time, struggling at times in the face of a world that is changing. In some ways he is the child and his children the adults. In “Googling My Parents” I suppose I was trying and failing to reclaim my parents. They both died in the late 1980s within six months of each other while I was living in London, and there’s always a sense of things left unsaid. The closing lines of the poem came to me slowly over time. I was trying to say something, I think, about memory and the human mind, its power and its shortcomings. I was trying to liken the brain/mind to a machine (not a very original simile I know) but that wasn’t enough. I was thinking about that story in the Gospel about the Transfiguration. Peter was bumbling around talking about building tents on the mountain when a cloud appeared and a voice spoke out of it to them. I knew then that that was what I was looking for. My parents speaking to me from the cloud (even if only in dreams). It seemed apt as, after all, everything is stored in the cloud nowadays.

SG: A poignant observation indeed. “My First Infatuation”, “Sour” and “Bully” examine early love and hurt through the eyes of a knowing adult. I’m curious about both the positioning of these poems in the collection and the process of writing them – did they come (almost) fully formed, or did you need to tease them out as part of a reckoning with the past in order to move foreword?

BK: When I’m writing poems I’m not thinking in terms of a collection or where each one might appear in a collection, but when I got to the stage where I sensed I had enough good work to look at putting a book together certain poems grouped themselves. In the case of the poems “My First Infatuation”, “Sour” and “Hydra” I do remember these being written around the same time. They are of a piece in terms of style and subject matter, poems about adolescence, I suppose, being considered from a later vantage point. When I was putting the collection together, I realized that “Bully” sat well in there too and also “Sundays in June” and the most recent poem I wrote for the collection “That Last Summer”. I was concerned I think with re-visiting earlier versions of myself – some of whom I didn’t altogether recognise at first. While writing of these poems, each emerged quite quickly and were then subsequently revised, mainly in terms of the sounds. I think sound is very important in my poems and how they read aloud is key for me when revising.

SG: I can see that, alright. There were a number of your poems that I read aloud to compare the experience of reading them in my mind. I enjoyed the back-and-forth glances between past and possible futures or futures that will now never be – in “Exile”, “Dog Days”, “Multiverse”, and in “Excursion into Philosophy” where you end with that wonderful question “Are beginnings and endings the same?” There is a solid sense of regret but alongside this there is a sharp sense of hope, like you’ve focused a lens in on it. Did you find solace and clarity in writing these poems?

BK: I’m glad you’ve alluded to the future in these poems. I wouldn’t want readers to think that I’m merely obsessed by the past (but yes, I do go back a lot to work things out for myself in the now). The collection is dedicated to my kids and to the future and the book, as it progresses, opens out I hope into a meditation on how the past feeds into the future in a cyclical fashion. I think everyone harbours pain from past experience, but what is really amazing is how, every day, people, even in the most extreme straits, manage to get up again and keep going on. I tend to agree with Joan Didion in that I write to find out what I really think, so there is always a sense of discovery.

SG: Yes, a sense of discovery and a hope that opens up. Hare’s Breath also spans outwards from your life exploring other journeys, the luck of survivors – in, for example, “Hibakusha”, “The Last Days of Pompeii”, “Train Dreams”, “Small Things” – and our impact on nature – in “Houses,” “Seaside Fools” and with that punch of a line in “Gaia”:

We’re dust, and nature doesn’t give a fuck

about our self-importance or regrets:

one day our books will float away in streams

Our own concerns fade into nothing in the bigger picture you paint, and yet, you show us how we – and all that we do, and those that we love – are so fragile and that is what really matters. That acknowledgement of vulnerability and with that a lightness, like in the final poem in the collection, “The Invisible House”, where you end with laughter. Is that the cure for us all?

BK: I think living is a constant coming to terms with things. Community, family, friendships are the things that make it possible for us to continue to live. (I think Covid reminded us of that also. There are some Covid poems in here which seem to fit). In the later stages of the collection the poems begin to look outward more, away from the subjective experience to a broader sphere, taking on social, political and ecological subjects. I’m convinced that being able to laugh at ourselves is one of the most important and one the hardest things to do in life. I hope there are moments of humour in the collection too, in poems like “Seaside Fools”, “The Workshop”, “The Last Days of Pompeii” and “Out of Time.” I’d like to think people will smile from time to time as they read.

SG: We will end with a few light questions:

  • Most surprising poem from Hare’s Breath? I think perhaps “The Last Days of Pompeii” because it is the most overtly political poem in the collection. It came in a rush as a kind of ‘state of the world’ poem and on reflection I think I was channelling the late Kevin Higgins who was a great mentor to many poets and had such a wickedly humorous way of making a political point in a poem.
  • It has that sense of humour and the punch of politics, like in much of Kevin’s work alright. Coffee or Tea? It has to be tea. I do enjoy an occasional coffee but limit myself to no more than one a day.
  • Sea or Mountains? I grew up by the sea in Rush, so it has to be the sea. But I love all things rural even though I’ve spent nearly all my life living in cites or suburbs.
  • Do you have a go-to book that you frequently re-read? Yeats’ poetry and lately Derek Mahon’s collected. I do have a look at Ulysses also every few years and I tend to re-read a lot of favourite short stories.
  • Quite a wide variety of go-to genres there! Any literary events coming up for you? I’ll be reading at ‘The Listeners’ at The Revels. Main Street, Rathfarnham Village on Tuesday 6th February 2024. After that I’m hoping to get to readings and festivals around the country during the year as much as possible.

Best of luck with the readings and festivals and I wish you much continued success with the collection. Hare’s Breath may be purchased from Salmon Poetry.

Photo of Brian Kirk in a blue shirt in front of shrubbery, courtesy of Brian Kirk.
Writer Interview, Writers Chat

Writers Chat 66: Alison Wells on “Random Acts of Optimism” (wordsonthestreet: Galway, 2023)

Cover of Random Acts of Optimism showing painting of a desert landscape with a ticking clock in the foreground and a red-leaved tree with a woman’s face peering at the clock. Image by Beatrice Mecking, courtesy of wordsonthestreet.

Alison, You are very welcome to my Writers Chat series. We’re here to discuss your short story collection Random Acts of Optimism which has been described by Billy O’Callaghan as “a genuinely marvellous collection”. Published by Galway based wordsonthestreet, it was launched in dlr Lexicon on September 20th. Many congratulations.

SG: Let’s begin with the title Random Acts of Optimism, which is a theme that runs through each story – despite the diverse forms within the collection – and, in my experience, optimism is the feeling with which are left with when we’ve read each story. Can you talk about how you came to decide on this title?

AW: When I came to write the title story I recognised that for Cynthia and Tom and for many of the other characters in my stories they were often taking action in spite of or in defiance of the constraints of their circumstances. The acts of optimism we take in our lives can run from stand out courageous acts to the everyday doggedness that so many people display as they push through difficult periods of life, as losses mount up over time or as we all faced during the pandemic years. Personally, I am also fascinated by psychology and how we convince ourselves of things, we can be courageously optimistic but sometimes optimism becomes delusion and that has been the subject of several of my novels as well as the stories in the book. For me, also, Random Acts of Optimism also relates to my own long journey as a writer, and also for every writer, trying to find the right words, reach people and hopefully get published. I’ve explored these themes in my writing blog Head above Water and hope to work with people to support them to maintain optimism in their writing lives.

SG: That’s very moving – working to help people maintain optimism in their writing lives. Something so very much needed. I really loved the opening title story – the characters, the narrative but also how you used the page to communicate some of the clinical ways our society was run during the Covid-19 Pandemic. It’s a heart warming story of connection blooming in adverse conditions. In particular the use of humour to fill communication gaps:

He doesn’t know what else to say so he tells her about a woman who returned a book two years too late. The book was called Successful Time Management for Dummies.

Can you talk about the origins and writing of this story?

AW: This story was rooted in my real experiences of the surreal and poignant experience of being one of a few library staff members sending books out to ‘cocooners’ during the Covid19 pandemic from a vast empty library. (The Lexicon library, currently the largest library in Ireland). Many conversations were stark but often a joke was shared and the topic of books always engaged and entertained us.

I also wanted to explore how a male character who is bewildered by his marriage breakup and fallen prey to the anxieties of the modern world  and not really able to make sense of it might begin to find answers through his unlikely connection with an older lady through the libraries and through books themselves. I’ve written (a yet unpublished novel) about a man who loses his way in life but in that case does not find a path back.

I still feel very moved when I think about the “cocooners” at home under often very lonely and vulnerable circumstances. What happened in the pandemic underlines the importance of real human connection (which, by the way, is one of the positives of public libraries with their events, social groups and book clubs) and the power of books and writing to help us feel that connection, understand ourselves and others and just be plain entertained and carried away, even in dire circumstances.

I think writing this story, more than any, allowed me to really depict the stoicism, humour and camaraderie that so many ordinary people have while negotiating everyday challenges. I went on to write several thousand more words of the developing relationship between the characters, so we will see where that goes.

SG: Well that sounds very intriguing, Alison, I really liked those characters and would love to read more. In “There’s a Café in This Story”, you tell the tale of connections breaking down, the importance of place and how necessary it is to keep hope in relationships. I loved the entwining of the inner character with the exterior of the cafe:

There are details that build up over time, the first, shyly uncertain pleasantries, umbrellas under the table, ankles knocking against the metal legs and then against each other. He wonders…. Will the cafes all merge, with all their combined sensations of exhilaration and regret?

Tell me about the structure of this story and how it came about? 

AW: We can use signs around us as scaffolding to reinforce the stories we are telling ourselves. This man, captivated by the idea of this illicit romance, sees the scene and objects around him as part of a rarefied and lovely story. Meanwhile, for his wife, sitting under the infant at home, the discarded coffee cup, her own tea out of reach, the immutable reality of domesticity, objects give a different flavour. Working in Dun Laoghaire, I often walked out on the pier. The sound and scent of the sea, the clanging of the anchors, the gulls were all very vivid, sensation laden images which I used to set the scene and evoke that sense uplift and freedom that the man feels his rendezvous give him.

I liked juxtaposing the man’s reality, his illusion of freedom, movement and magic with the more solid reality of the woman’s life in the alongside their joint memories/experiences of the past. These conflicting juxtapositions are reflected in the images of the servers’ arms criss-crossing,  the struts of the bridge, reaching up to put the star on the Christmas tree.  I think the to-ing and fro-ing between the man and wife’s realities allow us to see two sides to the story.

SG: I liked how seeing the two sides worked. I’m curious as to the order of the collection. I liked how “Sad about the Plumber’s Uncle” worked next to “All that Thinking”, in that the light relief and humour in the first story sets the reader up for the deep thinking in the second. How did you settle on the order?
AW: As you say, the stories in the collection are quite diverse in tone and mood and also what you might call genre, running from realistic to more speculative and fantastical. And as you say, occasionally there was a pretty stark reversal of tone. In other cases, one humorous story follows another but then a reflective element to that story might be echoed in the next. There are some stories about writing or having written (told from the point of view of a letter) and they are close together. To me, the process was similar to the rightness of feeling I felt listening to my favourite albums in the 80s, an instinctive feeling towards tone, poignancy, energy and pause. Sometimes evenness of tone is preserved and at other times the symbols or drums break the preceding silence. I like how the first story throws you right in and how the last story refers to a moment of coming home.

SG: I loved your use of sensory detail and pause in “The Spaceman Has His Tea”. The story has a straight-forward premise yet you created a narrative that is, in its underbelly, a philosophical consideration of the nature of our existence.

Unleashed from the world is not to be free of it, it is to be put in charge of the last egg in the basket, it is to be six years old have your mother put the egg into your hand and say ‘Don’t break that.’ And the earth is as blue as a bird’s egg, as precious as Fabergé, as fragile as Arctic ice. It is to be six years old and afraid of forgetting.

I love that it also concerns the lovely act of drinking tea and “meringue, light, delicious; clouds dissolving on his tongue.” How important are the senses to you when you write?

AW: Like many writers, I’m always pained by the gap between the richness and impact of reality, especially that of the natural world and how well I am getting it down on the page. I can be carried away by ideas and competing narratives, but I think what short work can do best and what I would like my writing to develop into is being more spare, precise, immediate and evocative. The senses are key to that. I grew up in the countryside, was immersed in it, reeds, wind, frogspawn, moss. The natural world evokes a strong feeling and I hope I can put some of that across through different sense impression. Recently I read the writing of Darragh McKeown for the first time and loved the clarity of it. The key to writing is specificity, we know the world through everyday things, what they evoke through senses and memory, what they mean to us. 

We will end this chat, Alison, with some short questions:

  1. Beach or mountains? Beach by a small margin but I grew up in Kerry near the sea with a mountain at my back and now live in Wicklow which also has both!
  2. Dart, train or bus? Definitely DART these days though I spent my college years on the train between Dublin and Kerry leading to many fascinating glimpses of characters.
  3. Do you usually have one book or numerous books on the go? Both writing and reading wise, the answer to this is always many, no matter how much I fight against it. I am endlessly, pathologically curious. I read for my own pleasure, for research for both writing projects and, currently for my dissertation for an MSc in Library and Information Science, I am also fascinated by neuropsychology and creative resilience.
  4. I love the idea of being pathologically curious! Quiet or noise when you’re writing? Quiet. Not easy to find. I used to get up at 5am when the children were young and we built a writing cabin in the garden but once the world gets going, quiet is never easy to find and the noise in my head hard to dodge.
  5. What’s the next three books on your reading pile? I just went to check and counted 50 books stacked up beside the bed! One of the perils of being a public librarian is constant temptations. I am about to read Books on Fire – The Tumultuous Story of the World’s Great Libraries by Lucien x. Polastron, The Creativity Code – how AI is learning to write, paint and think. These will inform future writing projects. I also have Poetry Unbound – 50 Poems to Open Your World by Pádraig ó Tuama put by – his selection of poems and what they mean to him. Just now, with work, study, family life and book launches, this selection is something to steady me, give me pause and interest and settle me down in the moment.  

Thank you, Alison, for such a generous and open attitude to and answering of my questions. I wish you every success with Random Acts of Optimism.

Order Random Acts of Optimism here and follow Alison here.

Photograph of Alison Wells, blonde hair and blue eyes, smiling directly at the camera, wearing a denim-blue cardigan. Photo courtesy of Alison Wells.

Thank you to wordsonthestreet for the Advance Copy of Random Acts of Optimism.