Thanks to
Sassi Sam I had the good fortune to meet with an interview Ciara Geraghty, author of
Lifesaving for Beginners. I would like to thank Ciara for her time and for being such a charming person to interview. I have edited out the rambling parts of our conversation, though they were pretty interesting.
What
inspired the story of Lifesaving for Beginners?
Lifesaving for Beginners was inspired by a
conversation I had with a friend of mine in County Kerry. The last time I was
there I was chatting to my friend and she was telling me the story of her two
elderly spinster aunts who lived together and died within months of each other.
My friends' Dad was their only remaining sibling and he was going through their
personal effects after their deaths and he found a birth certificate. One of
them had had a baby in her teens and given the baby up for adoption. The baby,
a baby girl, was sent to an American couple. But the aunts never spoke of it
and one ever knew. We don't even know if the other sister might have known or
not.
That
absolutely fascinated me, the idea something so huge could happen to somebody
and they just bury it and then continue to live their lives as if nothing ever
happened. So that inspired the story of Kat who as a teenager had a baby and
then lived her life as if nothing happened.
Forced or pressured
adoption is a very controversial issue. Are you particularly interested it as a
social issue?
I
remember in Ireland when I was 14, and there was this young girl, she was 15 at
the time and she was pregnant. She lived in a small town in the midlands in
Ireland. No one knew she was pregnant and when she was due to give birth she
went to the grotto in the town, which is a statue of Our Lady in the grounds of
the church, and that’s where she gave birth to her baby. She brought scissors
to cut the umbilical cord but it was a freezing cold night and they both died.
That
sort of snagged in my net, I never really forgot that, it was so horrendous.
Even to talk about it now, it's a horrible thing to happen to a young girl. In
Ireland in the 80s it was still such a shameful thing for a young girl to have
a baby and have sex. Those two stories (the young girl and the aunt) resonated
with me and I suppose that's what interested me about the whole adoption
situation, that's how I came to it. I'm more about the stories than about the
topics. Definitely I'm about the characters, they would be very important to me.
So
you started with this true story of the Aunt who had secretly given birth, from
there how does your story evolve? Does it start with a character?
It
definitely starts with a character, yes. So I had my character Kat Kerrigan and
I had the idea; and I was interested in the technical aspect of telling the
same story through two difference perspectives. I love the idea of perspective,
that two people can experience exactly the same thing but tell it very
differently because of their perspective. I wanted to tell the same story but
through two different people to see how that would work. So I thought Faith and
Kat.
But
I couldn't make Faith work. She a 24
year old woman I don't know if it was the age gap or if I wasn't that
interested but I tried for the longest time to tell it. I have a big file on my
computer labelled 'Faith' with about 25,000 words but I couldn't get it to ring
true, I just couldn't make it work.
Then
I was reading another book, Emma Donoghue’s Room. She tells a very horrific story of a woman in
captivity who is basically abducted and kept in a cell below ground on this
horrible man's property and she gives birth to a baby. (In the novel) the baby
is now five and Donoghue tells this horrendous story of captivity and abuse
though the eyes of a five year old. Because it’s told through his eyes, there
is such beautiful innocence to it. He’s seeing these dark and horrendous things
happening but because it is told through his eyes there is such a lightness and
innocence about it.
So
I thought why don't I tell Faith's story through the eyes of her younger
brother Milo, and the minute I started doing that it worked, it came.
Milo, the second
voice in Lifesaving for Beginners, is
at once such a mature young man and then he has just the perfect voice for a
10-year-old. How difficult was he to write?
I
think you need access to a 10 year old boy before you can write it truly. Emma
Donoghue, when she wrote Room, her
son was 5. I do think you need that experience, or have an incredible good
imagination. Even just the tone of their voice, you have to be familiar with it
to write it. At the time my son was nine and I just thought I have access to
this voice and this innocence and the way kids talk. He's one of my favourite
characters. He just really worked for me and I was delighted to be able to do
that.
Of the two voices
in Lifesaving for Beginners, was
there one that one easier to write?
Milo
was the easiest to write. Kat is a prickly character anyway, so writing her was
tricky but I really enjoyed it because she's nothing like me. I mean we're both
writers but she's in a whole different league. She's the JK Rowling of
thrillers. I had great fun writing her and getting to be difficult and prickly
but certainly Milo came much easier.
I
did worry about the readers – are the readers going to be rooting for Kat? Are
they going to be in her corner because she is so difficult? But readers are
giving me good feedback, saying they were won over by her. She is such a lovely
person but she buries it all.
Why is Kat so
prickly?
I think what's wrong with her is that she's
never dealt with what happened to her when she was 15 and she's basically been
dealing with post-traumatic stress ever since then. The car accident basically
forces her to deal with it, like a grenade landing in her life and blowing the
whole thing out of the water.
I
think she would have been a different person if that (giving birth as a
teenager) hadn't happened to her. It had a huge impact of her but she never
dealt with her and then with the accident all her chicken s came home to roost
at once and then she had to confront them.
Kat’s brother Ed,
who has Down Syndrome, was he a difficult character to write?
I
wanted to write Ed because I wanted there to be a relationship for Kat where
she shines. I wanted that one relationship in the book where her goodness and
her humanity shone through, and her relationship with Ed was that relationship.
My
children go to lifesaving classes every week and while they're there, there are
people with Down Syndrome in the pool as well, having a swim. That's possibly
where I got the idea from. And then I know a couple of people with Down’s and I
did a lot of research as well.
Hopefully
I got it ok, because you don't want to mess around with the portrayal of the
condition. It's difficult because you don't want to be patronising. You want to
deal with that sympathetically but not be patronising; there is a balance. He's
a nice character in his own right. You like Ed, you don’t feel sorry for him. That's
the side that Kat sees in him.
Lifesaving for Beginners was inspired by a
conversation I had with a friend of mine in County Kerry. The last time I was
there I was chatting to my friend and she was telling me the story of her two
elderly spinster aunts who lived together and died within months of each other.
My friends' Dad was their only remaining sibling and he was going through their
personal effects after their deaths and he found a birth certificate. One of
them had had a baby in her teens and given the baby up for adoption. The baby,
a baby girl, was sent to an American couple. But the aunts never spoke of it
and one ever knew. We don't even know if the other sister might have known or
not.
I
think you need access to a 10 year old boy before you can write it truly. Emma
Donoghue, when she wrote Room, her
son was 5. I do think you need that experience, or have an incredible good
imagination. Even just the tone of their voice, you have to be familiar with it
to write it. At the time my son was nine and I just thought I have access to
this voice and this innocence and the way kids talk. He's one of my favourite
characters. He just really worked for me and I was delighted to be able to do
that. 
