Tag: Writing

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, Writing Life

Writers Chat 52: Sara Baume on “seven steeples” (Tramp Press: Dublin, 2022)

Sara, You are very welcome to my WRITERS CHAT series. Congratulations on seven steeples (Tramp Press: Dublin, 2022). I loved the cumulative effect of this novel which felt – to me – like being swept away in a fugue of calm.

Photograph of the cover of seven steeples showing mountains with a blue sky in the background and symmetrical textile work on a grey wall in the foreground. Photograph provided by the author and used with kind permission from Tramp Press.

SG: Let’s start with the reading experience as I said above, reading seven steeples felt like being swept away into Bell and Sigh’s world and returning to my own world with new eyes, and a little less harried, even transformed. Since finishing the novel I’ve found myself paying more attention to the things that surround me, the purpose they serve, and considering how the space of our world can be as small or as broad as we need them to be. Can you talk a little about your intention with this novel – and what impact and effect you thought or hoped it might have on the reader?

SB: My intention, when I set out to write this novel, was the same as with every other book I’ve written – to catalogue a place and time and set of experiences that will not last forever. At the very beginning there was just a single road – the same one I walk every morning. Over the course of a year I took down notes every time I arrived home from my walk, little observations relating to how much – and how little – the road changed with the seasons. The novel finally grew out of those notes. I honestly didn’t think too much about what the reading experience might be. I was hoping people would find points of contact, details that struck a chord.

SG: And indeed there are many points of contacts and details that resonate. The prose – as all your writing (I really savoured handiwork ) is exquisite – I love the rhythm and pacing of seven steeples and in some way as I came to the end of the novel the symmetry of chapter lengths, the use of the number seven and the two dogs all felt soothing. It was as if you’d brought me through Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

“September was carried out on a week of bad weather”

“October mornings peeled the night cloud back to its subcutaneous lilac tissue.”

In composing the novel – and given you’re an artist – was symmetry and balance important to you, more, let us say, than plot or characterisation might be in a more traditional novel?

SB: Yes, certainly. It is, by my definition, an allegorical novel – driven by symbols and patterns as opposed to characters or plot. It is about the ritualisation of ordinary, secular life but there is also something very ritualistic about how it was written and is structured. Having said that, I never wanted it to be obscure. I always hoped that people would find some kind of kinship with Bell and Sigh (the protagonists) and their world, and be compelled to keep reading.

SG: One of the themes that stuck with me – as I was compelled to keep reading – was that of the ritual of journey. We have  the donkey, crows, cows, bullocks, seals, the journeys that Bell and Sigh make both within the house and in the surrounds; journeys that decrease in length and number with time.

“All four together…they arrived at the same places they always went.”

“They walked the way they always walked.”

Often narratives are about journey but with seven steeples you break the mould of a traditional novel that perhaps relies on a journey from one point to another and here the journey the people and animals make is for and of itself, attached to the landscape, following the seasons – and bound by time and overseen by the mountain, unclimbed.

“The years that it remained unclimbed piled up around them like their old clothes.”

Eventually, it seemed to me that their journeys contracted (“they made their long journeys on the internet”) in tandem with the growth in appreciation of the space around them. Have you any thoughts on this?

SB: That made me think again of bird migration – something I wrote about in handiwork. We all know what it means in relation to, say, swallows – who travel a long, long way from western Europe to sub-Saharan Africa and back again, but something I learned when I was researching for my last book was that some birds make very small migrations – moving just to a different part of the country – and many resident species, such as the skylark, have different spots for wintering and then for breeding. I guess what I’m saying is that we all make these tiny migrations all the time and they have always interested me infinitely more that the epic ones.

SG: The notion that we all make tiny migrations is fascinating, Sara. It seems to me that seven steeples is an exploration in mindful and harmonious living – in (literal) being – human, animal, land with the all-seeing mountain. It holds something of the pandemic entrapment but in a very positive and esoteric way. I know you’ve said in previous interviews (for example, The Irish Times) that much of your life goes into your writing. Does this reader’s experience echo your own experience of life writing the novel?

SB: It’s really interesting that you think it is so positive, and so soothing. Some people have read it as ominous and, in fact, I wanted the end to be dark, and everything else is more or less building toward the dark end. Lots of the descriptions come directly from my own life, but there’s also a lot in there that has been invented. It has been sometimes unsettling, to be honest, to hear people responding to it, though at other times enlightening. Apparently I am eccentric.

SG: Well, the different reactions maybe are about what we as readers bring to the novel, though there was an underlying darkness, I found comfort in being reminded to open my eyes! I really enjoyed the portrayal of the relationship between Bell and Sigh, their abbreviated names, for me, was the start of uncovering how they shake off the external world and begin to discover themselves, each other, what matters, what is left when the superfluous is discarded. I particularly liked your exploration of their speech – how they

“had been thoroughly infected by each others way of speaking…by their seventh year, they spoke in a dialect of their own unconscious creation. They sighed in synchronicity.”

It struck me that this a novel which explores the growth and expansion of a relationship over seven years, in a way that echoes what Marion Milner is doing in A Life of Ones Own when she explores – through introspective journaling – what happiness means to her over a period of seven years. Are you familiar with her work or do you have any thoughts on this?

SB: No! I’ll look it up. It sounds like a fascinating experiment. Though I think it would probably only drive me insane if I had to write it myself. I need the escape of fiction. The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd was on my mind while I was writing Seven Steeples, and Fair Play by Tove Jansson.

SG:  I need to look up those two books now! Lastly, Sara, similarly to handiwork, seven steeples is also an examination of the artistic process of living – a living artist – growth shown through every day routines that transform into rituals. I particularly loved how Bell and Sigh decided to have ‘house time’ whereby they didn’t change the clocks – this was also echoed in their experience of time marked by religious festivals whereby when they go to the village or to towns they see markers of these festivals – e.g. palms at Easter and they are almost strangers in this world. In a way, this is what seven steeples does – makes what is familiar in the world seem strange (or new) to the reader – to paraphrase Shklovsky, this novel showed me the sensation of life, made me feel and see the stone as stony again. Do you think it is an important role of art in society, to help people see the world with fresh eyes?

SB: Yes, certainly. You know that detail about ‘house time’ I actually stole from something I heard on the radio. They were taking about the possibility of scrapping daylight savings time and somebody texted in to say that she and her husband scrapped it years ago and function on ‘inside time’ and ‘outside time’ and I thought, of course, ‘that’s gold!’ and put it in the novel. But in a broader sense it’s something that’s been on my mind my whole adult life. I was raised Roman Catholic and abandoned it as a teenager and nowadays – the older I get – the more I miss all of those observances and ceremonies and the sense of belonging that came from being a part of a religious community. More than anything else the novel is about how to recreate that in the absence of organised religion.  

SG: It goes back to the importance of ritual again. So, to finish our chat, Sara, some fun questions

  • Tea or Coffee?  Coffee absolutely. I hardly ever drink tea tea. Most of all I soak mint leaves in boiling water and drink that – a lazy person’s mint tea.
  • Beach or Mountains?  That’s such an appropriate question for this novel! Preferably both, as in the novel, but if I absolutely had to pick it would always be the sea.
  • Yes! First draft handwritten or typed? Handwritten. Then I type it up without looking back at the handwritten draft. Completely bonkers but it works for me.
  • What’s next on your reading pile? I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg, originally published in 1964 but reissued just recently.

Thanks, Sara, for such insight into your process and some intentions on writing this novel.

Buy seven steeples here.

Photograph of Sara Baume wearing a red beret, green earrings and denim shirt. Photogrpah provided by author and used with kind permission of the photographer Kenneth O’Halloran

With thanks to Tramp Press and Peter O’Connell Media for the advance copy of seven steeples.

Writer Interview, Writers Chat

Writers Chat 48: Laura McVeigh on “Lenny” (New Island: Dublin, 2022)

Laura, You are very welcome to my WRITERS CHAT series. Congratulations on your second novel, Lenny (New Island, 2022) which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Cover image of Lenny by Laura McVeigh with a drawing of a canopy of trees with hanging foliage and blue skies lit up by stars

SG: Let’s start with the dual narratives in Lenny – that of the mysterious pilot in the Ubari Sand Sea in 2011 and that of Lenny in Louisiana in 2012. The narrative structure not only allows the narratives to converse with each other but, as they converge and the themes of home and belonging really come to the fore, they form a third, beautifully unifying story. Can you talk about your structural decisions when writing Lenny?

LMcV: I am always very interested in notions of time, memory, how we experience moments – and like to examine that in my writing, both in the substance and structurally. And one of the main themes within the novel for me in the writing was our relationship to time and reality, so a lot of the structure explores that in various ways. The dual narratives allowed me to create a sort of mirroring within the storylines – as you suggest, a kind of conversation – but also opened up the sense of time more broadly, allowing the reader to travel with that feeling in different ways.  I wanted to stretch and bend narrative time in the storytelling, just as Jim, Lenny’s father suggests is possible later in the story.

When I write, I write fairly instinctively.  So I don’t work out a structural scheme beforehand – I write into the story, and I find multiple narrative streams gives a depth and resonance to the writing, helping create echoes, connections – as you say, unifying.  I pull the threads together as I go.

SG: I think your instinctual writing is very much reflected in the tone of Lenny, as it carries the reader in a sort of wonderworld. Something that stayed with me long after I’d read Lenny, was the feeling that somehow, we are ageless, or that age does not matter when we zoom out and consider the world as a universe. While characters such as Miss Julie and Lucy and indeed Lenny’s mother, Mari-Rose, find themselves limited or restricted by age, the cumulative impact of the thread of The Little Prince (referenced throughout) and narratives of the pilot and Lenny was that I was left really pondering how we limit ourselves in so many ways in opposition to our world rather than in harmony with it. Lenny remembers Mari-Rose telling him that sometimes

“A story can end all sorts of ways…sometimes it doesn’t end at all, it’s just beginning.”

And towards the end of the novel, we find Lenny is “stretching time all around him.” Was this playing with time something that you had consciously or unconsciously woven into the novel?

LMcV: I love this question. And the idea that we are ageless! But it’s true, why don’t we look at life in harmony with nature and time, and see that we are part of something much more beautiful, infinite and mysterious.  In the story, we see Lenny’s watch that doesn’t work, the elastic band on Mari-Rose’s wrist, both symbols of how we try to hold on to the impossible. We tend to fear aging, fear death, decay. We are always fighting life, struggling – it’s in the very language we put upon ourselves constantly.  

So within the novel, yes, I was very consciously playing with time and our understanding of time and the universe, and the part we play within it.  In life we often look for narrative coherence – a story – a way of understanding a situation.  We explain everything to ourselves via story. But of course stories, like time, don’t travel in straight lines, simply from one point to another. So I wanted to explore and play with all of that, and push against those limits. I hope the novel reflects that desire for openness and possibility.

SG: Yes, I think Lenny reflects your desire for openness and possibilities and I think it comes out also in the relationships Lenny has with Miss Julie and Lucy and how though they both play mothering roles in the book, it’s Lenny who brings the women out of themselves, and opens the world to them. He starts off thinking that “believing is for adults” he comes to understand that to change the world and people, “you just had to believe”. It is such a beautiful message of hope. Did you feel you were writing a novel of hope when you were writing it or did this emerge through the writing process?

LMcV: Yes, that connection between Lenny and Miss Julie, or as the novel progresses with Lucy too. It’s so important for Lenny I think, at this point in his life to have someone looking out for him, someone who cares, but of course, it’s his spirit that is bringing healing and renewed purpose to them.  I suppose it’s that sense that we gain when we give – that in caring for Lenny they are opening up to being more caring towards themselves too, becoming more forgiving, more open-hearted.  I love that childhood sentiment of how life could be anything at all, so long as you believed it.  I think we lose that sense along the way sometimes, and yet life is such a gift – even with all its hardship and pain – so how do we navigate that with grace and love?  When I was writing Lenny, yes, I was seeking – whether consciously or unconsciously –  to write a story full of hope and love, because I think sometimes we forget, we lose sight of hope. Our better angels, I think Miss Julie might call it.

SG: Oh yes, our better angels! I love it. Places (and worlds) are in themselves characters in the novel. I really enjoyed how you played around with the individual experience of place and how this bleeds into human connection at all levels. We’re all connected by place as the Imuhar way states:

A man who wanders is free…he is not tethered, neither to place nor possessions

You touch on the magic of place and I thought this came out in the relationship between the pilot who falls from the sky in Libya, a seemingly empty canvas, but also later in the budding relationship between Lenny’s father Jim (who “looked like all he wanted to do was to walk away from himself”) and Lucy (who “knew her heart was full with joy around him.”). Can you talk about Lucy, the lonely librarian/activist with her lovely cat?

LMcV: With Lucy, at first we discover her really as others might see her – and I wanted to capture that sense of how much there is beneath the surface view – for all of us.  It’s not just the shorthand, the glance, the first impression.  Lucy is a work in progress, and she recognises that about herself I think.  She’s trying to heal after a lot of loss and hurt, and a sense of always feeling out of place. So I think Lucy is searching for ‘her place’ and in the novel she seems to find that in Jim.  I love that there are lots of contradictions alive within Lucy – I find that very human.  She’s caring and yet scared to open up her heart and life and let others in, she’s fearful of many things yet wants to live a bigger, fearless life.  In the novel, she has to ask herself if she’s willing to stand up for the things she cares about, if she’s willing to put herself out there – I love that vulnerability and uncertainty coupled with her determination.

SG: And I think it’s both ways – for Jim also finds an idea of home in Lucy. Lenny experiences life by interpreting place and time through senses and memory. He imagines what life would be like if his mama had not left him, if his daddy had not learnt to fly, and if the chemical companies hadn’t come…

“Lenny, half reading, half daydreaming, blinked into the dust imagining other planets, similar to his own, yet different all the same.”

In Lenny you capture that uncanny ability children have, to inhabit the world and at the same time understand wholly that there exists an alternative reality. In what way is Lenny an exploration of this – the what if question?

LMcV: Absolutely. In the novel I wanted to explore that possibility.  Science tells us it’s possible, indeed almost a certainty. And of course, in so far as life is perceived as experiential and experience is subjective, then we can accept that multiplicity of perception at the very least.  In childhood we live in dreams, but what if that is actually closer to understanding the mysteries of life? Again, the novel, on one level, is really an invitation to think differently, to move outside of our daily preoccupations and take a longer, wider view of life.

SG: Big business (and big countries) and the impact on the environment is one of the strong themes in Lenny. I loved that as an author you don’t preach, and that the theme fit so well into the story of who Lenny is and where he’s from. Can you talk about the importance of this theme and how Lenny with his warmth and lovability is the perfect character to encourage readers to consider the environmental destruction?   

LMcV: Within the novel I wanted to show how these things can affect a lifetime, a community, a place, land, and how what happens in one part of the world, impacts what happens in another. The novel really explores the ways in which war, big business, political interests all interconnect – so how do we stand up to that systemic challenge?  How do we start to really understand that a problem for Libya, for example, (water shortage/land degradation/conflict/migration/political instability) or for Louisiana (land loss/climate uncertainty/environmental pollution/over-industrialisation/home instability) is also a wider, interconnected, global problem. 

While the novel explores the idea of other possible worlds, it is also true that we all share this one planet – sadly unequally, often destructively. So how do we do better? What can we change?

The story therefore looks at the power of the individual to affect change, and that is where Lenny’s sense of ‘believing’ is essential.  With hope, everything is possible.

SG: Again, we’re back to hope. But war changes land, and people. Miss Julie hangs on to Stanley, Mari-Rose tries to believe in Jim, Goose wants to believe in what Tayri and Izil offer him – and all of them are in denial about their own part in destruction, and their inability to protect. Yet Lenny, because he is a child, he still finds hope and can still see the stars and possibilities, even when his town is literally sinking. Can you talk about the impact of war on the story? It feels especially relevant given what’s happening in our world right now.

LMcV: I have always had a deep interest in writing about war, conflict and its impacts on individual lives and communities.  I think this is born out of growing up in the North of Ireland in the 1980s in the Troubles’ years.  Even as a young child, of around Lenny’s age, I would have been very interested in the idea of peace, of the importance of peace.  So it’s a theme I continue to explore in writing.  

In Lenny we see Lenny’s father Jim return from the war, broken, suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), taking refuge in alcohol.  Part of the structure of the novel is in a way a reflection of that mental state – the short chapters, the jumping from image to image, idea to idea, the forgetting and remembering within the story.  But of course it’s not just Jim who is suffering – it affects his whole family, and all of his connections with other people. Miss Julie’s life too has been shaped by a war – with the absence of her husband Stanley since 1952.  So there is that sense of a life’s possibilities taken. Izil and his family are surrounded by conflict and the impacts of conflict and are trying to navigate that all too dangerous reality in the desert sands.  So the ‘what if’ questions become important and give us a way through to hope.

There are so many parts of our world where conflict and war is a daily lived reality for millions – Ukraine, Libya, Yemen, just a few that currently come to mind. Take a map of the world and colour in the countries where war or armed conflict is happening. Look at the history books and we see that war has always been with us. Does that mean we should surrender hope or look the other way?  Or can we, even through small acts of hope and love, make for a better reality?

SG: And in a way, that is one of the important roles of literature in the world – to get us thinking, to ask questions, and to give a sense of hope and possibility. Thank you for your generous answers, Laura and we’ll now end with five short, fun questions.

  • Southern or Northern hemisphere? Wherever the story takes me.
  • Ha! A very writerly answer. Woods or Beach? Ideally a hike in the mountain woods with a view down to the water. Having grown up by the Mourne Mountains next to Carlingford Lough I love both, forest and sea.
  • I’ve been on a few hikes in the Mourne Mountains – stunning. Music or silence while you write? Both, silence for thinking, music for feeling.
  • What are you reading now?  Io non ho paura (I’m not scared) by Italian writer Niccolò Ammaniti and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed but in Catalan – Els Desposseïts.
  • I loved I’m not scared when I read it a few years ago. And I must read more Le Guin! So, Laura, what are you writing now? I’m finishing a children’s novel for my daughter, writing the screenplay of Lenny, writing a collection of travel stories, and working on a new novel.

Well, that’s an astonishing amount of writing at once – your daughter’s a lucky girl! I especially look forward to the screenplay of Lenny and hope – and trust – Lenny will continue to reach many readers!

Black and White Photograph of author Laura McVeigh courtesy of Laura McVeigh

With thanks to Peter O’Connell Media and New Island Books for the advance copy of Lenny.