Tag: Novel

Writer Interview, Writers Chat, Writers Read, Writing Life

Writers Chat 57: Richard Fulco on “We Are All Together” (Wampus: 2022)

Front cover of We Are All Together showing a black and white sketch of a stage with instruments lined up against a stool, waiting to be played.

SG: Richard, Welcome to my Writers Chat series. Congratulations on your second novel, We Are All Together which comes out this November 2022 with Wampus. Let’s start with the cover. As We Are All Together is so person-centric, I’m curious about the cover which is a black and white sketch of the various instruments (literally) of We Are All Together. What message/s did you want to convey with this, and how much input did you have, working with Wampus, into the cover design?

RF: One reason I love working with Wampus is that its founder and creative director Mark Doyon provides me with ample feedback on everything from marketing to editing. Ultimately, Wampus leaves the decision-making up to its artists, so I am eternally grateful for the creative freedom that I have.

The cover art was created by my brilliant partner, the painter Nan Ring. She and I discussed the concept. I wanted something fairly cynical yet simple. The bare stage: a guitar, amplifier, microphone and stool. But where are the musicians? Nan and I wanted the cover art to start a conversation. We wanted to pose several questions considering the title of the book.

The Beatles have been an enormous presence on me as a writer and on this particular novel. The book’s title is from “I Am the Walrus.” “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.” The title claims, “We are all together” but in fact, the characters are not all together at the beginning of the book. In the United States, we are not united, never was, and yet we are inextricably linked nevertheless. I don’t think the irony will be lost on readers.

In addition, the edges of the image dissolve, indicating the ephemeral nature of life and art. Even as we are here together, we are all slowly leaving this world, which makes the present moment all the more intensely poignant and beautiful.

SG: Thank you for that explanation – it’s interesting to hear the story and conversations behind the cover and title. Leading on from this, it seems that We Are All Together could not have been set in any other era and any other country than the 1960s New York (and other cities).  Was the era – and all the conflicts of national and individual identity – what brought you to this story?

RF: Syd Barrett and The Pink Floyd brought me to the story and the recent politics in America provided me with a blueprint.

It began as a rock and roll novel about a young musician so desperate to make it that he’s willing to do anything, even betray his best friend. I drew upon my experiences as a desperate musician, living the life of a starving artist, doubting my abilities, and unwilling to face the truth about my artistic pursuits.

For several years, I wrote about music on my blog, Riffraf. I had the opportunity to interview the great rock photographer Mick Rock who had taken some of the most iconic photos in rock and roll: David Bowie and Mick Ronson, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and of course Syd Barrett. Syd’s story was a compelling yet strange one, and Mr. Rock shared his experiences with Syd that really piqued my interest. At the height of his musical powers, Syd just checked out. Was he an acid casualty? Was it mental illness? Or did he no longer wish to make music with the band he formed?

David Gilmour said, “Syd’s story is a sad story, romanticized by people who don’t know anything about it. They’ve made it fashionable, but it’s just not that way.” I am by no means trying to romanticize Syd’s story. Although I’ve included some of Pink Floyd’s mythology and lore. My novel resembled Syd’s story in the beginning, but eventually morphed into something more socio-political than I had anticipated. I owe a great debt to the American politics of the past decade.

SG: I thought you captured the public/private self well alright. Stephen is constantly trying to please those around him – on stage, at parties and even when he is supposed to be engrossed in his music he steps out of his reality to remember, for example, seeing the Beatles on TV. Stephen’s journey – and that of the reader – is about using others to find or create himself. Would you class this novel as a coming-of-age tale, a bildungsroman? Or is it more of a morality tale about vanity? Or does it belong to a genre at all?

RF: Whereas my first book, THERE IS NO END TO THIS SLOPE, is a coming-of-middle-age novel, this one is a more traditional bildungsroman. The novel’s protagonist, Stephen Cane, is a naive twenty-one-year old narcissist who is wrestling with his parents’ mixed messages, dreams, vocation and the belief that he is not a truly great man.

Stephen and his partner and friend, Dylan John, are young men on their own individual psychological, spiritual and moral journeys. Dylan travels in one direction as a civil rights activist, while Stephen, on a separate path, pursues his love for rock and roll. WE ARE ALL TOGETHER is also a buddy novel and a road novel. There’s even a touch of historical fiction and perhaps some thriller/mystery elements tossed in for good measure.

I suppose there are moral questions posed, but I don’t think of the novel as a morality play. At what lengths would you go to gain success? What role does the artist play in this world? Does the world need another rock star? Now that I think about it, Dylan is kind of like Everyman who is trying to justify his time on the earth.

SG: Yes, there is a touch of Dylan as the seer, and also the Everyman. While We Are All Together is, on a top level, an exploration of the lure of fame, and perhaps a commentary on a capitalist society – “My old man had been instructing me ever since I was a boy that whenever money was involved, I should seize the opportunity, no matter who gets shredded in the process, even if that person ultimately turns out to be me….” – it also sets its gaze at parent/child relationships in the formation of “character”, and “reinvention”. Early in the novel, we’re told:

“Some mothers inspire their children to aspire to greatness, to reach for the stars, like Arthur’s mother. But my mother, who was kind of musical in her own way, singing in the church choir and all, encouraged me to play it safe…the world ‘dream’ just wasn’t in her vocabulary.”

To what extent do you think Stephen’s strict religious moral upbringing with a focus on money making, is related to his constant misjudging what is expected of him in the relationships he tries to forge? I’m thinking here of the complex relationship with Emily, and then later with her as Gentle Wind (who, perhaps accurately, claims he has “never loved anyone” in his life).

RF: I’m not sure that Stephen misjudges Emily (also known as Gentle Wind). He witnesses her prejudice and bigotry on their first night together when she makes an anti-semitic remark. I think Stephen chooses to overlook Emily’s questionable, reprehensible behavior because she’s not only beautiful, but she’s also a terrific artist. He’s a young, lonely loser who just had his heart broken and is desperate in both art and love. He’s seeking the love, attention and approval that his parents failed to provide. Stephen is truly impressed with Emily’s natural talent. Wondering if he possesses greatness himself, Stephen wants to be near greatness, hoping that maybe some of Emily’s will rub off on him.

SG: I was thinking not that he misjudges her but that he misjudges the relationship. This desire to be near greatness, as you say, is also why he has John as a friend. You make great use of description, colour, and visuals to capture the clothes, atmosphere and attitudes of 1967, or the Summer of Love. From Emily’s “ratty dungarees with holes in both knees”, “yellow button down with a wide collar and large bright silver buttons”, to the “purple stairs” which Stephen and Emily descend, and a projection of a montage of “films of suburban families opening presents in front of a Christmas tree, psychedelic mushroom swirls, the conflict that was heating up in Vietnam, and police officers beating negroes with Billy clubs.” Or later the band is

“decked out in black and wearing dark shades… stunning female back-up singer, a blonde mannequin in a white leisure suit and black scarf”.

It strikes me that We Are All Together is very filmic. Could you see it as a film – or a play, given your playwriting background?

RF: I never envisioned this book as a play. Though I do think there is some fairly decent dialogue within. When I write a play, I accept the stage as my biggest challenge. I love writing dialogue, but I also consider ways to tell my story visually? Writing a novel is quite different. And for this book I attempted to write a more traditional, linear tale, but I wanted to go really big with its visuals. Let’s include a chapter with Andy Warhol and the Factory. Why not take a trip across America? I like Pete Townshend, so let’s make him a character. My vision was broad and ranging. I saw the narrative quite clearly. The Sixties provided me with color, extraordinary political events, and powerful images, so I’ve tried my best to preserve them in prose.

SG: Yes, you’re right about the vision – and it’s quite a journey you bring the reader on. We Are All Together also explores the expanding, changing world of music (and touches on the art and film world with Warhol making multiple appearances) in the 1960s, and shows the reader – through Stephen – how closely it was linked to political change. How important was it for you to track socio-political change and in doing so, echo tensions and polarisation in America of today?

RF: When I embarked on this project, my intention was to recall some of my experiences as a singer in a rock and roll band in the 80s and 90s. I set it during the Summer of Love because I wanted the protagonist to be somewhat of a precursor to punk, someone outside the mainstream. But early on it was clear to me that the character I thought was the book’s protagonist, Dylan John, was really the protagonist’s (Stephen Cane) foil.

The more research I did on the Summer of Love the more I learned about The Long, Hot Summer where more than 150 riots had taken place across America, the most notable rebellions were in Detroit and Newark.

As a white writer, I discovered that there were two narratives in the summer of ‘67. The white narrative of The Summer of Love – peace, love, and understanding, is more mainstream, while the black narrative of racial injustice, discord and the quest for equality takes a back seat.

I’m ashamed to say that I really didn’t know too much about the Long, Hot Summer until I began writing this novel. The more I wrote, the more invested I had become. Dylan John questions his role in society and decides to join the fight for civil rights. He doesn’t think the world needs another rock star. He believes the world needs soldiers in the fight for justice.

I created two narratives that parallel the socio-political events of the time. There is Stephen Cane’s story – The Summer of Love – and then there’s Dylan John’s story, The Long, Hot Summer. It was a very conscious dichotomy. While I was writing the book, America was in turmoil, mimicking the events of 1967. WE ARE ALL TOGETHER is set during the Summer of 1967, but I’m really commenting on present day America.

SG: That duality and commentary comes across really strongly, Richard. It really speaks of how our own situation as writers and the when/where we are writing from seems into our narratives. Stephen and Dylan John/Arthur Devane are polarised characters in this respect and your use of dialogue worked well in this respect. Can you talk about the relationship between Dylan John and Stephen Cane and how this asks questions about the role of the artist in society – is it to provoke? Create change? Make money? Do something “meaningful”, as Dylan says?

RF: We Are All Together addresses a nation struggling with its mythological past and the effects it has had on the integrity of the individual. Does the artist owe the world anything? Does the ailing world need another rock star? The role of the artist is to comment on the world. The artist seeks truth. The artist tries to make sense of this perplexing world. If the art is truthful it might offer a fresh point of view for the audience (or reader).

SG: Questions that are timeless. But was it difficult to incorporate real musicians and bands (The Beatles, The Velvet Underground, Mamas and Papas etc) into the fictional world of We Are All Together whilst maintaining the integrity of Stephen’s story?

RF: It was actually quite fun. I particularly enjoyed writing about George Harrison. I wanted to write about the time George was in Haight-Ashbury and how disappointed he was in the flower power counterculture. And there is Stephen Cane in the midst of it all, pleading with George to listen to the only song he has ever written.

The infamous story is that George and his wife Patti visited the Haight on August 8, 1967, but were really turned off by the culture. In his biography Dark Horse, Harrison said, “Somehow I expected them to all own their own little shops. I expected them all to be nice and clean and friendly and happy.” Instead, he said, he found the hippies “hideous, spotty little teenagers.”

SG: Again, it’s that duality – perception/ expectation/ reality. Part of Stephen’s journey is also experimenting with various class A drugs, especially heroin “his papa” which eases his guilt at

“Failing to protect my mother when my father went to town on her with his black belt and wide silver buckle. Breaking up Ghost Spider. Replacing Dylan in Red Afternoon. Sleeping with my best friend’s wife”.

There are times when our sympathy for Stephen wanes. But you pull us back with humour and bizarre horror, such as The Jolly Jokesters on their magic bus, Furthermore which bring both reader and Stephen out of his self-obsession and back into the reality of a divided society. Can you comment on the humour in the novel?

RF: I wouldn’t say WE ARE ALL TOGETHER is a particularly hilarious novel. One might find the hapless Stephen Cane somewhat amusing. Certainly Tony Campbell, the writer and entrepreneur, might make one smile. Neal Cassady has his moments too. Though even in the dark there is light. Mark Twain said, “The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.” Whenever I’m writing I search for the humor in the tragic. I’ve written a number of tragicomedy one-act plays, and I approach all of my writing with some levity. You can’t write from inside a casket all the time, right?

SG: Exactly! So, lastly, Richard, let’s conclude our Writers Chat session with some fun questions:

  • If you could be a character in your novel, who would it be? Clementine. She is a poet, a lover, a traveller, a wandering spirit, an adventurer, a good friend.
  • What song from We Are All Together would be its soundtrack? “Arnold Layne” by Pink Floyd influenced the psychedelic songs written by Dylan John, Red Afternoon and even Stephen Cane’s one song.
  • Silence or noise when writing? Noise while writing. Silence while editing.
  • Favourite band doing the circuit today? Wilco.
  • What is the most surprising read you’ve had this year? The Talented Mr. Ripley and Oh William! 
Photograph of smiling Richard Fulco wearing black-rimmed glasses and a navy-blue shirt, against a background of a lake and forests.

Purchase We Are All Together at Barnes and Noble, Amazon or AppleBooks

Learn more about Richard Fulco at Wampus.

With thanks to Richard Fulco and Wampus for an advance copy of We Are All Together.

Writer Interview, Writers Chat, Writers Read

Writers Chat 55: Catherine Dunne on “A Name For Himself” (Arlen Classic Literature: Dublin, 2022)

Catherine, You are very welcome to my Writers Chat series. We’re here to discuss A Name For Himself first published in 1988 and re-issued this year as part of the Arlen Classic Literature Series. I finished reading the novel on the same weekend that The Irish Times published Stolen Lives, a heart-stopping report on the “239  violent deaths of women in Ireland from 1996 to today”. It is an awful thing to say that the narrative of A Name For Himself speaks of a horrible truth still present and persistent in our society. But it also reminds us of the role novels have, as you say in your Afterword, “in exploring the texture of our daily lives in a way that can help us understand ourselves and others better.”

Cover of A Name For Himself showing a painting of a man in black with his arms around a woman in pale yellow against a background of houses and within wooden houses (painting by Tove Kregs Lange)

SG: So let’s begin with the title which tells us something about what motivates Farrell (one of the main protagonists) but also speaks of the role of class, money and reputation in Ireland. Can you talk about how you came to decide on this title A Name For Himself?

CD: Thank you, Shauna, for your invitation to take part in ‘Writers Chat’ and to discuss A Name for Himself on the occasion of its reissue by Arlen House.

In one way, it feels as though the writing of Farrell’s story took place a long time ago (it did) but in another, it’s a novel that still feels very recent. I continue to have a strangely intimate connection with Farrell and Grace. I think that’s partly because their story became my second novel: the one that made me believe I was on my way to becoming a writer. I say ‘becoming’ because I’d come across the view – on multiple occasions – that ‘everyone has a book in them’. And once my first book was ‘out’, I was genuinely terrified that that was it: the well had now run dry!

So, writing A Name for Himself was a very special experience. It was a complete departure from my first published work, In the Beginning, which drew on those contemporary issues and relationships that were familiar to me. But the story of Farrell and Grace – apart from one moment of inspiration, or perhaps recognition is a better word: that moment when a writer becomes aware that the spark of a new story has ignited – my second novel was a work entirely of the imagination.

During my career as a teacher, I’d spent the best part of two decades working in a disadvantaged area of Dublin. The 1980s in Ireland were a dismal time economically and socially.  It was also a decade of high emigration: more than 200,000 people left this country during those years. As teachers, we felt we were educating an entire generation for the dole queue, or the emigrant boat. Those years brought me face to face with deprivation in a way that had a huge impact on me. I saw ‘up close and personal’ the devastation caused by lack of resources, by intergenerational unemployment, by lack of opportunity and by social attitudes towards ‘the working class’.

When I began to imagine Farrell, his background came to me fully formed. I have always believed in the notion that writers don’t choose our stories: instead, our stories choose us. And when Farrell began to colonise my writer’s imagination, he emerged from a disadvantaged background, one he was determined to escape. He wanted, needed, to make a better life for himself. When his family of origin fell apart, he took every opportunity offered to him to be independent and self-sufficient. Through the kindness and solidarity of his local community, he became first a carpenter, then a master craftsman.

Everything about Farrell’s rejection of his background propelled him to create, rather than destroy. He wanted nothing to do with the violence and chaos that his father had created within the family. He rejected everything about him: appalled at the damage he had done. From an early age, Farrell even refused to call himself Vincent, or Vinny: that name belonged to his father, it was no part of him.

And so the title of the novel was born from Farrell’s determination to forge his own path, to have no connection with his hated father, to become his own, separate self.

I already knew what the trajectory of Farrell’s life would be, even before I began to write. I knew that he would behave in a way that was likely to make him infamous: he would indeed make ‘a name for himself’ in the process. And so, with that double helix of naming, the novel’s title was born.

SG: What a wonderful insight into your process and inspiration, Catherine. Thank you. Now, although A Name for Himself is not set in the present day, there is much of the way society works – the rush to secure property, the demand for tradesmen, the blooming craft businesses – that echoes in the Ireland of today. I think the Dublin that you capture is still recognisable. Are you surprised at the timelessness of place?

CD: Returning to the novel after a quarter of a century, there were many surprises: and some of the echoes, as you call them, were chilling.

I was writing in and about the mid-1990s, the period that led to the Celtic Tiger, to escalating house prices, to full employment, to the accumulation of wealth to a degree we had never experienced before. It was a heady time, for some: property became the new religion for men like P.J., and craftsmen like Farrell were in high demand.

It was a time of great economic and social change.

For Farrell and Grace, such affluent times provide them with an opportunity to be independent. But ironically, they also remind Farrell of the difference in class between him and the woman he loves.

The first time he sees Grace, in her father’s building in Merrion Square, the elegant surroundings emphasise to him – the man in the worker’s overalls, the man with a Dublin accent – that this woman is out of his league. Her father agrees, and this dangerous dynamic, this silent, subterranean tug-of-war between the two men has the potential to be every bit as damaging as the actions of Farrell’s own father.

I think we like to believe that class in Ireland is not an issue in the way it is, say, in Britain. I disagree. And along with economic prosperity, greed, and ruthless property developers, class divisions are still part of our society today.

SG: And that’s what this novel highlights I think. In Farrell, you’ve created an incredibly complex character who we come to love, as Grace does. Mia Gallagher in her excellent Foreword, outlines this reader position so well in that, similar to real life situations, we are totally taken by how he is presented, how he presents himself and how he is seen. It is only when we begin to feel what is behind his actions (or if we read carefully) – fear, inadequacy, lack of self-worth and so on – that we begin to see what he might be capable of. Can you talk about how you developed Farrell’s character?

CD: The development of Farrell’s character is just one of the chilling aspects of this novel that I referred to earlier.

I became completely obsessed by him during the writing process. I had nightmares about him. I saw the world, not through his eyes, but as though I was perched on his shoulder. I watched, sometimes horrified, at the way his character was unfolding. It all felt strangely inevitable. I followed where he led.

I know there are writers who will disagree with that last statement: who will say that the writer is always in control of her characters. And while that is true – I can kill off whomsoever I like, whenever I like, for example – it still feels deeply necessary to follow the shadowy paths that often appear to us, unbidden, in the tangled forest of the writing process.

I didn’t consciously choose what Farrell would do next, what he would ultimately become: it was much more instinctive, more intuitive than that. I went where it felt right.

And I was aware that Farrell’s fear of abandonment, his lack of self-worth, his sense of ownership when it came to Grace: all of these aspects of his emotional landscape created a powder-keg of dangerous possibilities.

But I needed the reader to feel empathy for Farrell. I knew what he was going to do – but I also knew that we tend to label people as ‘monsters’ when they perform monstrous acts that we don’t understand. It’s a way of creating distance between ‘us’ and ‘them’ – but that distance is in no way useful in helping us to understand what drives us – all of us – to do the sometimes terrible things that we do.

The term ‘coercive control’ was not in current usage in the 1990s, in the way it is now. But I had observed such behaviour in action and understood that men who were bent on controlling their wives or partners often appeared on the surface to be vulnerable, devoted, caring: ideal partners and spouses, pillars of their community.

How many times have we seen evidence of that volitional distance between ‘us’ and ‘them’ in the aftermath of a domestic tragedy? How many times have we heard the perpetrator described by others, in the wake of some violent atrocity against a woman, as a ‘lovely, quiet man’?

And although, for the purposes of the novel, I had a clear view of how Farrell and Grace’s story would end, it felt important not to portray him as a monster. At one point, I give him the chance to confront his demons and perhaps create the possibility of another life for him and Grace. But he rejects it, clinging instead to his own sense of entitlement and ownership.

SG: I think that sense of, as you put it, feeling, your way into Farrell’s actions is also felt by the reader in the atmosphere that runs through the novel. The multiple narratives work brilliantly in shining a light for the reader on the evolution of Farrell and his actions, especially the haunting present day “now” narrative that slips in, unsuspecting, and then increases with such tension until the narrative catches up (in time) with that day, that birthday. As I was reading it, a large part of me was hoping that the seemingly inevitable would not happen while knowing it would. Did these narratives come once the story and ending were cemented or did you start there and work your way back?

CD: The series of present tense scenes – one of which opens the novel – were written after the main narrative was complete. But from the beginning, I had three narrative strands in mind. The contemporary story of Farrell and Grace’s meeting and their growing relationship; seminal scenes from Farrell’s past, both childhood and adolescence; and finally, the ‘now’ scenes, scattered throughout the narrative to increase suspense and to highlight the inevitability of what is going to happen.

I began writing this novel in 1995. It’s not that I have a prodigious memory (I wish), but I was so consumed by the creative process during the two years of writing that I made copious notes about structure, about characters, about significant childhood events – I mostly used file cards, back then.  Word processing was still new and I had greater faith in pen and paper. I still like to use notebooks when I’m working on something new – something about the slower pace of handwriting makes for a more reflective process.

From 1995-1997, the writing of A Name for Himself was an experience of total immersion. I had taken a career break from work, and was acutely aware of the ticking clock. I had a limited amount of time to write this book, and it was one of the many occasions over the intervening almost 30 years that I have understood the value of deadlines.

Those two years also taught me that writing is an organic process. The act of writing in itself creates inspirational moments – the ability to see clearly those inviting paths in the forest I referred to earlier.

Turning up at the desk is the first essential. Words follow.

SG: What dedication to your craft and I love how you used the immersion and set time that you had to both write and also record how you wrote. What a wonderful thing to be able to look back on those index cards! Definitely for the archive. In relation to making, Farrell is “a maker in a most tangible craft” (Mia Gallagher) and I found it reassuring that Grace, too, is a maker, an identity denied to her by the men in her life (most notably her father) – until she meets Farrell.

I was really interested in how A Name For Himself therefore also explores the act of naming and, through this, agency. Farrell drops his first name “Vincent/Vinny” so that it is not tinged with the actions of his father and so understands Grace’s struggle to name who she is, and what she is. This enables him to literally open doors for her to make her dolls. There is, however, also the sense that Grace creates the dolls with care parallel to Farrell’s conjuring of Grace-as-possession. Can you talk a little about this aspect of the novel?

CD: Farrell does indeed understand Grace’s need to create, and to carve out an independent life for herself. In this, her needs are a reflection of his own. But his efforts to help her fulfil her dreams are, in fact, driven more by Farrell’s need to be in control than Grace’s need to be free and independent of her father.

Even at the very start of their relationship, we see Farrell’s obsession, his overwhelming need to be the ‘master craftsman’: ‘Grace held his arm tighter. Farrell thought he would explode. By the time they reached the city centre, he had planned and mapped and fashioned the rest of their lives’.

At a later stage, Farrell says to P.J. that he intends ‘to give her [Grace] a good life’ (my itlaics). As though her life is a gift that he has the power to grant her.

In many ways, Farrell is recreating the family he lost in the way he relates to Grace. It’s as though she becomes a child, someone whose whole future depends on how he crafts it – rather than an adult woman with agency of her own.

He oversees her making of dolls, Noah’s arks, toys of all kinds with a pleasure that is a complex mix of emotions, a mix designed to make the reader uneasy.

Yes, I felt that when reading it, that he was creating a child out of her, but also enabling her to create her own ‘children’ (the ones they long for) in the dolls and toys.

Lastly, Catherine, some short questions:

Do you usually have one book or numerous books on the go? If we’re talking about reading, rather than writing, then yes, I very happily have several books on the go at the same time. There are ‘upstairs books’ and ‘downstairs books’, and for Luas and bus journeys, there’s the ultimate ‘handbag book’ – my trusty Kindle. Although paper claims my affection and loyalty every time – a Kindle is for convenience.

As far as writing is concerned, I can’t focus on more than one obsession at a time. The most I can manage is, say, working on an essay at the same time as a piece of fiction.

I love the idea of upstairs and downstairs books, and that you use a Kindle (I do for travelling). So, quiet or noise when you’re writing? I used to believe I needed absolute quiet for writing. Then I spent several months in India. The only safe electrical connection in the village was in the local cafe, so I used to go there every morning.

That year, the cricket world cup was underway and the entire community for miles around came to watch the matches on the big TV screen. As you can imagine, the men’s enthusiasm was not expressed quietly. Apart from that, it’s difficult to find a quiet spot in India anyway – its large population makes sure of that. Very quickly, I learned to tune out the noise.

I still prefer quiet – but it’s good to know that I can adapt.

Generally, do you plot/plan or go where the writing takes you? I have a dreadful sense of direction. Anybody who knows me will tell you that. Even following a map, I have the capacity to get spectacularly lost. Some of my most enjoyable journeys have resulted from not knowing where I’m going.

Writing is a bit like that. I’ve always liked the comfort of having a map – a starting point and an end point: that was certainly the case with A Name for Himself and indeed, for subsequent novels.

But getting lost in the forest is also part of the joy.

Right now, as I start a new piece of work, I’m adopting a different approach. I have a vague idea about my idea – and I’m going where the process takes me.

I remember seeing children in primary school being encouraged to ‘take a line for a walk’ – just follow your crayon across the page and see what picture emerges.

That’s what I’m doing now. It’s strange, and different, and exhilarating.

I’ve no idea where I’m going next.

What freedom in just seeing what emerges! Coffee or Tea? In the morning, coffee for sure! In the afternoon, different types of tea.

What’s the next three books on your reading pile? They are all books that have been overlooked for a while, because I got carried away with so many other sources of printed temptation. So I’ve promised myself to go back to them. They are: The Nine Lives of Pakistan by Declan Walsh. Fifty Words for Snow by Nancy Campbell. No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood.

A great selection, Catherine! Thank you for such insights into your process, the thinking behind some of the characters and for your generosity in answering my probing questions.

Catherine Dunne (Photo: Noel Hillis)

Purchase A Name For Himself.

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Read Catherine Dunne’s article in The Irish Times about what inspired this novel.

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.