Tag: Interview

Writer Interview, Writers Chat, Writers Read

Writers Chat 54: Deirdre Shanahan on “Caravan of the Lost and Left Behind” (Bluemoose Books: Hebden Bridge, 2019)

Deirdre, You’re very welcome to my WRITERS CHAT series. We’re here to talk about Caravan of the Lost and Left Behind (Bluemoose Books: Hebden Bridge, 2019).

Cover of Caravan of the lost and left behind by Deirdre Shanahan. Image shows a winding country-side road by the sea with a back-drop of a pink sky, setting sun against dark mountains.

SG: Before we get into the narrative and people in the novel, can you talk about the origins of the title and the stunning cover?

DS: This is really interesting to answer as the title is not the one I used at submission, as the publisher thought it sounded too science fictiony. So though I like it very much and initially felt unable to come up with another title- having been told this just before Xmas, I somehow went into overdrive and came up with others. This was one of them and was accepted.

I liked the word ‘caravan’ not just for the sense we have of it but for its original derivation- which I hoped, maybe in my naiveté,  gave a more universal  suggestion. In the Oxford dictionary it says:  Eastern or North African company of merchants, pilgrims etc travelling together for safety.  I love this. ‘The Lost and Left Behind’  – anyone who does not feel part of the main body  – anyone at a particular time in their lives who feels separate from the whole.

I have always been  interested, sometimes felt like this myself and really this is where the interesting stories are- on the perimeters of the mainstream – in whatever group –  for instance even  the main character in Edward St Aubyn’s Melrose novels  is ill at ease and misunderstood -does not feels be ‘belongs’   to the  aristocratic group he is born into and it is this distance which allows the sardonic tone to the novel.

You could say as much about Heathcliff, any of Jane Austen’s heroines who feel they don’ t quite fit in. Elizabeth Strout’s characters- Leila Slimani’s. I think all the interesting stories are found where people feel out of place and to be ‘looking in.’ My main characters are those who feel socially / emotionally and psychologically different – who are not immediately at home in the world.

The cover. This was not how I originally envisaged the cover, but after a series of other ideas were submitted to me, including a generic kind of landscape, I thought  the latter would  work if it was heightened, in some way, if the colours were kind of electric and weird, suggesting turbulence and displacement so that is what I pushed for. Thank you. I am glad you like it.

SG: I think the colours are gorgeous on the cover and it really draws the reader in. Now, structurally Caravan of the Lost and Left Behind is divided into four sections – places which represent hope and the possibility of belonging – and we follow Eve and her son Torin on their journey of escape. Did the structure, the story or the characters come first to you?

DS: You sensed one of my primary concerns when embarking on this novel and my initial thoughts. My  original idea was  4 first person narratives relate the story and was much influenced by Louise Erdrich’s  work–  until I found very little moved  in the development of the characters. I realised I was constricting myself within an imposed form that just did not suit the story I wanted to tell. And I had no need to do this.  So I  started again but that was a good thing.

I found that a 3rd person narrative overall but structured into four parts allowed me the breadth to convey the story and the shifts in narrative. It was an easier structural form than I was making. It impressed upon me how, for me, the story dictates how it wants to be told. Form comes after- is secondary.

There seemed to be 4 distinct movements of the story which I wanted to emphasise, and they became the four sections.

SG: That’s great to hear how you worked through what was best for the story itself – so often this happens when writing novels, our original structure needs to change when the story is clear. The search for family is one of the main themes of the novel. Absent and unknown fathers and mothers, siblings, and at the same the wonderful ease of deep understanding that exists between the characters – Torin, a stranger, is welcomed into both the site and the town, though he doesn’t quite know how to handle belonging. Both Torin and Caitlin dream of finding their fathers but as Caitlin says,

“Dreams are as delicate as the bones of a thrush, and if you grind them down like the poor bird, there will be no flight.”

Can you talk about this?

DS: I think exploring the inner life, dreams, longings, regrets, etc of characters  are what the novel is best at, and is a uniquely privileged  form to undertake this- it offers a unique opportunity to show the inner lives of people – how they are in themselves and how they are in relation to others. The novel offers the space and breadth to do so. Although in some ways the lives of my characters have been restricted they still have hopes and dreams – maybe these are all the stronger for the little material effects and wealth they have.  Their dreams have been squashed but are still present and alive in terms of what they feel.

In youth, dreams are powerful  and I wanted Caitlin to feel she had the passion and power to have ideas beyond her situation but she is wise as well and can see they could be easily snuffed out. She has lived between people, in unstable situations, enduring a greater loss as I saw it, in that she has neither parent around, but  I wanted her, as opposed to Torin, to have a strong sense of how she wanted change and recover her life. She is like a catalyst for change which Torin knocks up against and it provides the means for both of them to move on.

SG: The theme of the outsider – and how we “other” ourselves and people we don’t know – is also threaded through the novel. Torin lives in constant fear that his past will catch up on him while simultaneously confronting his mother’s alienating past; Eva returns to a person rather than a place that she calls home. Eva puts it thus:

“It was what she wanted, to be taken back to where she started and sitting in a bar with a man who would make her feel better.”

And Torin sees that “she did not fit in there, she did not fit in here.” How important is the notion of “home” to the novel, given many of the characters live their lives moving from place to place?

DS: I think we all strive for a place where we feel we fit in and belong which we might call home, whether or not it is a geographical location and can sometimes feel as if we don’t belong whether in a larger political sociological sense or in more personal relationships.  To belong to a group or to another person is, I think,  a deep human need  we strive to fulfill for better or worse.  To have a sense of ‘home,’ whether we wish to find that within the group or with one other,  is a universal concept and despite my characters sense of one being transitory and temporary, I wanted the search for one to be a central thread in the novel.

 ‘Home’ is an increasingly powerful and resonating notion as we hear daily of those who have to leave their homes, or are displaced from them whether within a country or having to flee to another. Right now, my Ukrainian friend and her mother are unlikely to see their home again, something which I find really unsettling and upsetting.

Home  is such an emotional concept. We all start from one and spend time trying to create / recreate one in latter years. Even if one rejects some of the ideas around home and how it may be restricting, I wanted my characters to have a sense of the gap in their lives but not knowing where exactly their home lay and to be searching for it.

SG: In this sense your novel really examines timeless and universal themes. Love casts shadows and lights up their lives – family, friends, strangers – and I liked how every day love and compassion is shown with a gentle pace which allows the reader some reflection. In this sense it brought to mind another Bluemoose book, Leonard and Hungry Paul by Rónán Hession. Would you agree that Caravan of the Lost and Left Behind is character and theme driven rather than plot driven?

DS: Yes, I would agree and very much hope the novel is driven by character. As explained above, the novel for me is the realm to explore human psychology – our wants and needs, dreams and fascinations. Of course the novel can do other things- it can present a puzzle in terms of crime or thriller but I wanted to examine a cast of characters and see what motivated them, follow them in their hopes and dreams. The way we are as human beings is endlessly fascinating. We are a complex mixture of emotions and it seems to me that is the most rich ground on which to work in terms of a novel. Nothing about us is straightforward and I hope I illustrate the depth and complexity of what it means to be human, to be alive.

 I hope the characters’ development provides  staging posts for the narrative to move.  I hope I portray characters who interact with each other and this provides the grit for the momentum of the novel.

SG: Lastly, the writing is lyrical, sensual and so beautifully set in the landscape of the coast which contrasts with the life in London that Eva and Torin have fled. Despite being a stranger to the natural world – seen very movingly in the scene with Caitlin where they find jellyfish – Torin has a sense of generational memory of being “from the sea” even though “this outside world overwhelmed him.” Do you think the writing is a vital part of the story?

DS: I think you must mean, do I think the way I write, which you describe as ‘lyrical, sensual’  adds to the story?  Please let me know if I have got this wrong.

SG: You’ve got it right – yes, I’m asking about how the sensual writing and your use of the senses serves to examine the feel and experience of rural/urban life.

DS: Yes I think it does at least I hope so. I hope the way I write helps convey some sense of how the characters like  Torin experience the world. I have to say though that I do not labour to create this sense. I am afraid it is the way I write. The natural world is evocative for me and I think I have transferred some of my delight with it to  Torin. I do not purposefully or consciously think, oh now I must write in a lyrical mode. This is the way the writing comes out. I know at times I have to reign myself in as it could be a distraction, and may not adhering to a characters make-up and real way of being.

Because much of the novel is set in landscape I suppose I allowed myself a freer licence to write in this way or rather, the writing came out like this. When I write about cities or other situations I can be terser in my style of writing. I try not to think about it too much.

So, to finish up, Deirdre, some fun questions:

  • City or Countryside? Countryside – ultimately after lots of indecision, I came down on this side. I love cities for all they offer – stimulation, chance to meet like-minded people etc, but to do my work, I think the quiet of the countryside offers slightly more ideal conditions. I would however keep making forays to the city to catch up.
  • River or sea swimming? Sea  – every time
  • Music or quiet when writing? Quiet – definitely
  • What’s next up on your reading pile? ‘Manhatten Beach’  by  Jennifer Egan
  • What writing are you working on now? A novel set in during the Spanish Civil War as well as another longer piece of fiction and some short stories.

Thanks, Deirdre for such insight into your process and intentions.

Photograph of writer Deirdre Shanahan. Photograph courtesy of Deirdre Shanahan and used with permission.

Buy Caravan of The Lost and Left Behind here.

Buy Carrying Fire and Water (Splice) here

Follow Deirdre Shanahan on her website.

With thanks to Deirdre Shanahan and Bluemoose Books for the copy of Caravan of the Lost and Left Behind.

Writer Interview, Writers Chat, Writers Read

Writers Chat 53: Lia Mills on “Another Alice” (Arlen Classic Literature, Dublin: 2022)

Lia, You are very welcome to my Writers Chat series and I’m delighted to be talking to you about your novel Another Alice first published by Poolbeg in 1996, and reissued this year (2022) as part of the Arlen House Classic Literature Series. I spent much of the early to mid 1990s outside of Ireland so missed out on this important and impactful novel when it was first published.

Cover of Another Alice by Lia Mills (title in yellow font, author name in white font): showing a dark leafless tree against a contrasting background of green, on a shadow of a hill with the figure of a child in black silhouette in the foreground. Image is art by Carmel Benson.

SG: Let’s begin with the beautiful cover (by Carmel Benson) which captures both a loneliness and melancholy that is echoed in how Alice experiences life (internally and externally) in Another Alice. Did you have an input into the cover image and how does this new edition speak to the Ireland of 2022 just as the cover of 1996 spoke to Ireland then?

LM: I chose that image! Carmel is a friend, I love her work and this print has hung in our kitchen for years. I was very happy that she gave me permission to use it. And I have to say, Arlen House do beautiful covers. Alan Hayes, the publisher, is exceptional in the level of choice he gives to writers with regard to covers and the results work very well.

As for the 1996 cover, I’ve always disliked it. The woman whose face is depicted on the cover wears frosted lipstick. Alice is not a frosted lipstick kind of person.

SG: I love how Arlen House covers often use contemporary art to grace their covers. With regards the original, I’d agree with you about the lipstick but I do like the sea-scape as this speaks to Alice’s relationship with the coast. So, you’ve outlined in your interview with Catherine Dunne why Another Alice is being issued now – especially in relation to the central theme of gender-based violence and how Alice’s story is still relevant to today’s Ireland. I liked how you expressed that learning to see is what the novel is about. So just as

She practised forgetting what she knew, because if she didn’t know, she couldn’t tell

then as the story evolves, Alice unlearns all these practices.

Could you talk a little about how this forms the arc for Alice as a character – learning to see into herself and know that beyond the stories she has told herself, and those told about her, is where the real Alice lies?

LM: I should say at the outset thatmost of my understanding of how (I think) Another Alice works has come to me since I wrote the novel. The actual process of writing it was a long process of trial and error and feeling my way through a very murky series of confusions and reluctance.

As I mentioned in that interview with Catherine, Alice has never been able to claim childhood experiences as hers because they have been denied by everyone around her, renamed even as they happen, while she is blamed for any damage, any harm that comes to her. This is apparent to a reader from early on in the novel but it’s not clear whether Alice herself is aware of it. Later on, however, a different narrative voice surfaces, describing and expressing the process of splitting, which was Alice’s defence mechanism as a child. This new voice tells us what happened and how Alice escaped what happened. If she wants to be a fully autonomous (literally a self-naming) person, the adult woman has to rediscover, recognise and reclaim the lost parts of herself revealed by that voice and learn to trust her own perceptions. She needs to remember herself, as in: putting a shattered self back together, and become a conscious individual.

What’s important to Alice as Holly’s mother (as opposed to as an individual person) is that she learns to recognise the ways in which she was shut down when she was a child. She sees the patterns in her own reactions to Holly when she does things she regrets, and slowly learns to correct those urges to protect herself at Holly’s expense.  So, she becomes both a more integrated person, which is to her own benefit, and a better, stronger mother for Holly.

SG: You really showed this process of Alice’s change really well – as a reader it felt like I was experiencing what she was going through! Another element that made for a very emotional read was the tone in which much of the story is told.

We meet Alice through an omniscient third-person narrator and we’re told a version of her early life but beneath this is an underlying tone that both propels us to read on with a sort of subliminal knowledge of what may happen, that is felt more than known. This seems to echo Alice’s own first person voice and makes, at times, for an uncomfortable read, I think because Alice is so disassociated from her body and memory. Was this intentional or did it emerge instinctively through the writing?

LM: It took time for me to find the right voices for this story. The key, really was finding a way to write it where the reader would recognise the dysfunction in Alice’s world while also leaving room for potential ambiguity. I was interested in the mechanisms of denial, and there are scenes where I wanted to show incidents that many people might be happy to shrug off or overlook, but in the context of Alice’s overall story and the power relations within her family, it becomes clear (I hope) how destructive they are. For example, we’ve all seen – and some people may have experienced – a child being tickled when they don’t want it, begging for mercy. As the younger Alice tells it, that experience is clearly abusive. The issues here are about power (psychological and physical), consent, relative strength. As so many abusive situations are. I have to tell you that when a friend of mine read the novel back in the 1990s, she told me the character she identified with the most was Alice’s mother. Which is a whole other conversation.

In retrospect the use of a third-person, past tense narrative voice for the main story was a fairly straightforward decision but this was my first novel and I tried it in different ways.  Having decided on that, I still had to learn how to tell the story without killing it with detail. And all the time, I was being pulled into this other voice, first person, present tense, chaotic and emotional. It seems obvious now, but it took me a while to recognise that I had to make room in the narrative for that voice – and she solved a lot of problems for me when I just decided to let her get on with it.

SG: Voice is also so central to a novel, and I think using these voices, you’ve captured the power/consent/strength issues in a very subtle and unsettling way. And on Alice’s mother, well, that is another conversation as there was the definite impression of a whole backstory to her behaviour and denial.

I really enjoyed the movement – and change – in Alice’s friendships, in particular Nell, but also Kate. You show these women’s growth and struggles in terms of conformity, societal expectations and emergent motherhood. And the thing is that those challenges are still faced by women in Ireland today. There is no “dating” these themes, despite the theoretical changes in this country. Could you comment on this?

LM: I don’t think the core experiences of human life change very much over time. Becoming a mother is a prime example. It’s such a seismic shift in perspective and awareness, and so many of us are utterly unprepared for it – I know I was. Everyone’s circumstances are different, so we each have our own adjustments and negotiations to navigate, each within our own lives and whatever context we find ourselves in. It’s the contexts (social, physical, financial, historical cultural) that change and obviously they affect the nature of the emotional and physiological experience. It’s a rich seam, for fiction, because we can all find elements we recognise in a fictional mother’s story at the same time as we see issues that are foreign to us. So there’s a balance of recognition and surprise that allows us to empathise while also wondering what we might do or feel in similar circumstances.

Friendship is friendship. It’s such an immense part of our lives and I don’t think it gets enough attention in fiction. Over a lifetime our relationships with friends change, we can get closer and more distant and then closer again, we might have dramatic break-ups, reconciliations, reunion after long separations … it’s a fascinating dynamic, every bit as interesting as other relationships, with a whole spectrum of emotions running through it.

SG: I love how you express that – “a rich seam for fiction”. It was emotional seeing Alice as a young mother struggling with her own self (literally), what it means to be a mother, and how to be with her daughter, Holly. “She watched herself mothering…” I cried at two scenes – the one with car – and the one where she slaps Holly. Both of these acts – rooted in a desperation to control – end up as acts as freedom because Alice is able to name what she has done and acknowledge this anger. They also echo some of the disconnection that Alice felt with her own mother, for example, when Elaine breaks down, “She watched herself watch her mother crying at the kitchen table.” These were incredible scenes and opposite to the oppressive and stifling scenes of her younger self. I’d imagine these parts of the narrative were difficult decisions to make a writer – which way does Alice go? – and also tricky to write?

LM: These were tricky scenes to write, yes, because I think our instincts drive us to protect our characters and sometimes we just have to put them in danger, or make them do things we’d rather they wouldn’t do. But isn’t that the whole point of writing? To explore the more painful, difficult truths of human experience. If all our characters stayed on the straight and narrow path all the time and made all the right choices, there’d be no story.

Who was it who said that ‘writers write what other people think/know but can’t say’? In this novel, Alice is in trouble not just because of her childhood but because she is out of control in many ways. There’s no point in pretending that she never does anything wrong, or that she’s somehow not responsible for what she does (which is actually what her denials are all about: transferring blame to Holly, as her parents transferred blame to her). Her task is to learn how to understand and correct the mistakes she makes. Like life, for all of us. Like writing. As Beckett has it: Failing, then failing better.

SG: You’ve expressed the point of writing so succinctly, Lia “to explore more painful, difficult truths of human experience.”

LM: Of course, writing is about imagining and expressing other things too: beauty, hope, alternative worlds … yet another conversation!

SG: Yes, of course, writing is also about re-imagining…So let’s finish up with some light-hearted questions:

  • Tea or Coffee? I’m a Libran – it depends what time of day, what mood I’m in. Coffee usually comes first, tea later
  • Music or silence when writing? Silence
  • Cats or dogs? Both!
  • Sea or Mountains? Sea
  • What are the next three books on your reading pile? Thin Places by Kerri Ní Dochartaigh; Susan McKay’s Northern Protestants: An Unsettled People; and Walk Through Walls: A Memoir by Marina Abramovic.

SG: Oh you’ll love Thin Places and I have McKay’s on my tbr pile. I must look up Abramovic. Thanks for the recommendations. Thanks, Lia for such open, generous answers. I wish you many new and re-readers of Another Alice.

Follow Lia on her blog

Buy Another Alice here

Writer Interview, Writers Chat, Writers Read

Writers Chat 46: Amy Cronin on “Blinding Lies” (Poolbeg: Dublin, 2022)

Cover of Blinding Lies by Amy Cronin showing a woman in a darkened room looking through blinds on a window

Amy, You are very welcome to my WRITERS CHAT series. Congratulations on your debut novel, Blinding Lies (Poolbeg, 2022) which is a cracking read.

Let’s start with your journey to writing. It was something you always wanted to do but life happened – as it does – and it’s now that you’ve thrown yourself into the world of words. So why now? And why this genre?

AC: This genre is the one I read the most; crime and psychological thrillers are my go-to books. The escapism on offer, and the need to solve the mystery, is very appealing. When I was younger I loved mystery stories; the Nancy Drew series was a firm favourite. This has continued into adulthood, and as this is the type of book I love to read, it’s what I was drawn to write.

Why now? I think it had a lot to do with turning 40 during lockdown and the general sense of unease the pandemic brought, the feeling that life is for living, and if I truly want to give writing a shot, then I have to dedicate myself to finishing something and put myself out there. My favourite subject in school was English, but I didn’t study it in college. I focused on business, marketing and management, but I never stopped tinkering around with words. I’ve written stories my whole life, and during the pandemic I focused like I never have before on finishing my first book. It was cathartic, a great escape from the daily coverage on TV and radio. Writing Blinding Lies was addictive, something I looked forward to everyday. It finally felt like the timing was right.

SG: It’s great to hear that you continued with your passion – and the way you describe your writing process it sounds like it really was the right book and the right time. And how fantastic that as a writer you now get to give your readers the escapism that you so much enjoy.

There are several aspects to Blinding Lies that stood out for me. The first is the protagonist, Anna Clarke. She’s the underdog, working in the administrative section of the Garda Station and yet manages – perhaps because of her mathematical background – to see patterns that lead to complex crimes being solved. Tell me about the origins of Anna.

AC: I wrote a chapter featuring Anna many, many years ago. I had read so many books where the protagonist is a seasoned man, capable and experienced, and he invariably saves the day. I really wanted to read a similar book featuring a woman who could do the same. It wasn’t until I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that I found a character who felt believable in that role. The only problem I had with Lisbeth Salander was that I couldn’t relate to her. I adore her character still, in the books and the movies, but she felt very far removed from anything I could connect with.

In creating Anna I wanted her to be really ordinary, like myself and most people I know. I wanted readers to be able to relate to her. I found a lot of resources online, writing.ie, inkwellwriters.ie, and had done some writing courses, so I knew my heroine needed to reach readers in a way that made them root for her. As I wrote, I found I was really rooting for her too!

When Anna Clarke was 16 her parents disappeared. Up until that point, she was living what could be considered a very normal life. After that, she and her older brother live with the continuing mystery, never moving closer to solving what happened. As a child Anna’s father taught them self-defence games and encouraged them into his passion, Tae-kwon Do. After his disappearance, focusing on this gave Anna a lifeline out of depression and worry, and as the book opens, she’s a black-belt, continuing her training, and teaching self-defence to young children. She’s drawn to logic, to numbers, studying mathematics and statistics in college, working for the Gardaí to compile statistical reports. Numbers offer the comfort of certainty, which appeals to her as a balm to the enduring uncertainty of what happened to her parents. Anna is a strong woman, yet vulnerable, leaning on her brother often, yet resenting his interfering ‘father-figure’ role. She’s flawed, not always making the right decisions, but her moral compass is set straight, and it’s her determination to help her friend Kate that propels the plot in Blinding Lies.

SG: And again, the idea of helping a childhood friend is something that we can all relate to. The themes of self-defence is key to both the narrative and also two of the main characters. Anna teaches and practices Taekwondo-Do and another interesting female character, Kate Crowley, is a kick-boxing champion. Was this a theme that interests you or did it come to you as you developed the characters?

AC: It was suggested to me by an early reader, when the book was in the first-draft stage, that Anna be a kick-boxer, to add plausibility to scenes where she’s under threat. By that point I had already decided she was studying and teaching Tae-Kwon Do, mainly because I did so myself and know how beneficial it is in general.

The kick-boxing idea grew though, and I used it as a point to confuse Anna and the reader, to input doubt over the character of Kate – I wanted her to be someone we aren’t sure is guilty or innocent. Anna is certain her childhood best friend is innocent of murder. But she learns that in the years they lost touch Kate learned kick-boxing to a high level, and with her own knowledge of self-defence, Anna then begins to doubt Kate – if she was capable of defending herself so skilfully, why shoot a man dead?

I studied Tae-Kwon Do when I was young, although not for as long as I would have liked! It has always appealed to me, and I planned it as a facet of Anna’s character to be the crutch she would lean on to recover from the disappearance of her parents. It offered an anchor, something to focus on. I know that the skills taught in self-defence go beyond the manoeuvres – I wanted Anna to have a calm mind, to have self-control when it mattered most. I know Tae-Kwon Do can cultivate this level of discipline, so it was always going to part of her story. The fact that it was her father’s passion was something I found very emotional to write. Anna trains as much to feel close to him as anything else.

SG: Yes, the link to her father came through very strongly and I thought that link between the body and mind in Tae-Kwon Do was really interesting and key to Anna’s character. At the heart of the Gallagher-Crowley dynamic is David’s abuse and coercive control of his wife, and his father’s control of his empire. Can you talk a little about this theme of control?

AC: Control, or attempting to restore it, is certainly a theme through Blinding Lies. Anna Clarke is the protagonist. In her training, in her job, in everything she does, she is measured, to counterbalance how out-of-control her life went when she was 16. In that respect, she and Tom Gallagher, the main antagonist, are very similar. Both are seeking to control the world around them to a high level.

For Tom Gallagher, we learn that everything he has built up, his criminal business, his respect and status, was borne of control. While his son David was abusive, what Tom lamented most about that was his loss of control, which ultimately led detectives to the family, and ended up with David dead. David’s loss of control is rippling into Tom’s existence and he can’t stand it. Everything he does in Blinding Lies is about regaining the control he feels slipping away from him.

It’s interesting that control is such a strong theme throughout Blinding Lies, as it was written at a time when the world felt completely out of control to me. The world around me was shutting down because of a new virus as I wrote, and as the main characters fought for control in their world, I was coming to realise I had very little in mine! I write with a vague ‘start-middle-end’ outline, and I didn’t realise until the book was finished how much the characters rely on and seek to gain control. But as I said, writing Blinding Lies was cathartic during the early stages of the pandemic!

SG: Isn’t it really interesting how what’s going on for the author becomes distilled in their writing? Parallel to this theme is the idea of people having two sides, and also of fighting for a better life. I felt this was captured well in the characterisation of Tobias.

“Tobias…had fought his way to this position in life. It had come to him the hard way. There were bodies stacked up behind him, in his past, people he’d had to move out of his way. Sometimes, at night, he dreamt of their faces, how their skin had sagged, and their muscles had twitched in the final moments between life and death. At night, he felt vulnerable, freaked out by the dead. By day he was in charge again, a man not to be crossed, nor to be defied.”

So many of the characters know what they want and will go to great lengths to get it. Can you comment on this?

AC: Such characters are great propellers of plot; decisive, driven, charismatic. For me, this book was my attempt to finally immerse myself in writing and go after what I really wanted. I guess that’s reflected in the characters too. Regardless of what they want – be it revenge, the truth, closure and peace – the characters are determined to get it. Anyone with ambition, for whatever that might be, can relate to that.

Most of the characters in Blinding Lies are driven by love for their family, which is a very powerful force; Anna, for her parents and for her friend. Kate is driven by saving her sister and nieces; Tom Gallagher by love for his wife and son John, and by avenging his son David’s death. All things are a mix of light and darkness; in even the worst of characters, there is some redemption, and in the best of characters there are elements of shadow. Striving to rise above, being ambitious, are traits readers can understand, can get on board with. And they make memorable characters that turn the pages.

In the case of Tobias, he is a minor character but his actions have a big impact on the antagonist. Tobias does terrible things, and the “bodies stacked up behind him” allow the reader to gain a glimpse of his past. But there is an element of fear in him too – the people he killed freak him out at night, and in Blinding Lies, he cannot return to his employer empty handed, with his mission incomplete. I wasn’t trying to elicit sympathy for him, rather to show that like all people, his nature is multi-faceted.

SG: Yes, I think that’s why I found his character interesting -he’s more than what he seems. I also found that the workings of the various rankings in the Gardaí were well done – I especially loved the scene when Detective Sergeant William Ryan goes to one of the major crime scenes and “closed his eyes and inhaled, breathing the scene deep into his lungs. Anna’s voice played in his head as though he had recorded her testimony and was playing it back…He cut an unusual figure, standing in the middle of the room with his eyes closed and his arms by his sides, turning this way and that…” Can you talk about your research into investigative procedures and methods?

AC: The internet helped with this, as did absorbing information from the countless crime novels I have read. I also have a garda friend who happily answered questions, but I didn’t delve too deeply into detail. I tried hard to get the garda procedures right, but ultimately, Anna is a clerical officer, not a detective, and so I didn’t dwell too much on detailing procedures.

I love the character of William Ryan, but I really don’t know any detectives like him! He’s young, a little eccentric, a little off-putting to some colleagues, but ultimately very like Anna Clarke – his moral compass is set straight.

SG: It’s great to read a book set in a place that is familiar or that you know well. I loved how Cork was so real – street names, hotel names – and also fictionalised to a large extent, to fit the story. Tell me about that process of setting the scene – it felt like you’d researched the city in terms of traffic, weather, times it takes to get from place to place.

AC: I’ve lived in Cork all my life; well, except for some time spent living and working in the UK, when I was very homesick! I grew up in the countryside, then moved to the city to live for eight years, before moving back to the countryside again. Initially I was unsure about setting Blinding Lies in my home county, but as I wrote, I realised there was nowhere else it could be. It felt right to set the novel in familiar territory.

Some place names are real and some are fictional. The Garda station in Blinding Lies, for example, is called the Lee Street station. This doesn’t exist but is named after Cork’s River Lee. It felt right not to accurately name some places. But other places are steeped in memory for me – such as the fountain on the Grand Parade where Anna meets Myles, and it was lovely to include that.

SG: Finally, I found myself thinking about a question as I read Blinding Lies – how well can we ever know anyone, including our family? There’s a lot of intrigue, passion, and greed in the novel – it’s what drives many of the characters including the Gallaghers – and there’s Anna’s burning desire to find out why people do what they do, including disappear. Can you talk about this?

AC: This is certainly true; how well do we ever really know the people close to us? Often that’s not called into question until extreme events take place.

In Blinding Lies, Anna’s brother Alex is worried about reopening the search for their parents, because he was a lot older than Anna when they disappeared, and he remembers things that lead him to believe he didn’t really know who they were. This, of course, is unsettling for him. He’s an insomniac, constantly worried about keeping his sister safe, never able to relax. The questions that consume him are not just where their parents are, but who they were.

Of course, some people do know the inner nature of those close to them, and chose to turn away from that truth, as Mae Gallagher does for her husband, and as she did for her son David.

Anna is the opposite of that – she’s a deep thinker, and for ten years the need to understand her parents’ situation has burned inside her, and it has shaped how she looks at people and situations, I think. She should have walked away from Kate’s plight, but she needs to understand it, because she cannot understand the terrible events that shaped her life when she was 16.

Ultimately, for the characters, if they cannot understand the people around them and why events have taken place, the ground feels very shaky, and control is lost.

  • SG: I can’t leave our chat without mentioning the last line of the novel, “it was time to discover the truth”. Ae looking at a trilogy or a series?

AC: I’m very happy to say that Blinding Lies is the first book of a trilogy. I didn’t realise Anna’s story would span three books until I started to write. But it’s not just her story, it’s her parents’ and Tom Gallagher’s as well. I’ve always enjoyed reading a set of novels about the same character, and I hope readers will take Anna to their hearts and follow her journey.

SG: I have no doubt they will, Amy! And now for some fun questions:

  • Cork county or city? Cork county, because it’s home.
  • Mountains or sea? The sea, definitely.
  • Tea or Coffee? Coffee.
  • What are you reading now? Right now I’m reading The Widow by K.L. Slater.
  • What are you writing now? I’m currently finishing the third book in the trilogy.
Amy Cronin holding a copy of her debut novel Blinding Lies

Connect with Amy on Twitter: @AmyCroninAuthor

With thanks to Poolbeg and Peter O’Connell Media for the advance copy of Blinding Lies