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.
That's
like being asked who is your favourite child. My characters are like children.
You get involved with them, then you let them out in the world and then
reviewers get on to them and say what they want. It's hard to let go sometimes.
Grave O'Brien from Saving Grace is
one of my favourite characters but only because she was my first and you never
forget your first. There is something very special about her.
You
create great characters, very human and relate-able. Is it easy for you to
create characters? Do you enjoy it?
That's
one of my favourite things, creating characters. My books are definitely
character driven. I was telling you about Faith who wasn't coming to me so I
had to drop her. I think if a character isn't coming easily, if you're kind of
pulling them out then you do need to reconsider. The voice is very important to
me, it has to ring true, so if it's not working then what I would do is what I
did with Lifesaving for Beginners and
just shelve them and go in another direction. So yes, characters are really
important to me.
Do the characters
come easily?
Yes,
I think so. I love people, talking to people, I’m interested in people. Plot is
something that comes quite differently. Plot is something that I really
struggle with. I had the character of Grace O'Brien (from Saving Grace) for so long in my head and I didn't know what to do
with her. She was my first one so I was pushing her around on the page for so
long trying to get her to do something interesting. In fact I think it took six
months for her to do something interesting.
I
think once you have a character and she’s believable and your readers can
invest in her, then you can make them do whatever you like and readers will
come with you. I hope so, anyway.
Do the people in
your life make appearances in your characters?
Yes,
everyone thinks they're in the book, or they say ‘I know who your man was’. No,
almost all of them are made up, entirely fictional. Of course you borrow little
quirks because I like to put quirks into my characters for the comic relief. So
I do borrow, but in such a way so that no one can recognise themselves.
As a reader, you
forget Lifesaving for Beginners is
set in Dublin until a little Irish-ism appears. Are you ever tempted to write
in really strong Irish accents or do they just not ring true on the page?
I
never think about that because I'm all about characters and so whatever way
they speak that's the way I write it. Like at the moment I'm writing my fifth
novel and I'm writing in the male perspective, which is a first. The lead
character is a taxi driver from Dublin and he's got a really thick Dublin
accent, so that’s quite challenging as well to put on page. I don't know what
my editor is going to feel about that because I've written his accent in, spelt
just the way he's saying it.
So
yeah, I don't think about it, I just write dialogue. It’s one of my favourite
things to do, to write the way my characters speak. I don’t think about Irishisms
or anything like that because you have to be true to the characters.
Why did you title Kat's
final novel Lifesaving for Beginners?
Just
a bit of fun, I suppose. I just thought why not, for the craic. I suppose her
book is fictional like Lifesaving for
Beginners but the title does refer to what's going on with her. She's at
the tender age of nearly forty and she's kind of learning about life and how to
live and how to be and how to be at peace with herself. So it did feel kind of relevant
to her and the book that she was writing, because even through it's a work of
fiction, it's kind of the story of her life so it felt right to do that.
Was
Lifesaving for Beginners always Kat's story?
She
was always the main person. Originally it was going to be a three people
narrative, but it was just too unwieldy. Like fly three kites at the same time,
trying to keep them up in the air. So I deleted one character who I loved, who
was an old man that I wrote in an old short story years ago. He's an old
watchmaker in Dublin and I adored him but I had to delete him.
The end of the
novel is wrapped up nice and neat. Are you ever tempted to write ambiguous
endings?
I
like to tie up the loose endings and I think the readers like the resolution. There
is a bit of ambiguity at the end of Finding
Mr Flood (Geraghty’s third novel).
Certainly the love stories I have to tie up. I think it’s also expected
of the genre, that you have to have the happy ending. So I do. I like a happy
ending. I don't know if I'd ever be tempted to do something unhappy. I don't
think my editor would like it.
Are you ever
tempted to write in a very different style or genre?
I
write short stories and I've got them published and I'm trying my hand at a
screen play, but certainly the novels are where I've been successful. But I
like that style of writing. I like mixing dark with a bit of comedy and that is
sort of my calling card, people expect that now. Hopefully they're laugh and
feel the emotions. That's kind of my trademark and you need to deliver on that.
Are you ever
tempted to write your own stories?
Converting
my own story into a novel would never interest me. I'm more interested in
making people up.
After the luxury of
having all the time in the world to write your first novel, was it difficult to
then have a tight deadline for the second book?
Writing
my first novel was my secret life. Not even my mother knew. I really loved it;
no deadlines, no pressure, just scribbling away. So when my publishers
bought it, my editor said it didn't need editing, because I'd spent so long
perfecting it.
My
second novel really was the difficult second album. It was really hard, though
my publishers were very nice to me. I was pregnant when I started writing Becoming Scarlett and they gave me more
time because they thought I would get flustered. People are kind to pregnant
women. So I kind of wrote it during the 9 months I was pregnant. That’s why it
always sort of had to be about pregnancy because when you’re pregnant, you channel
pregnancy stories and it just made sense to me.
(Becoming Scarlett) Is about a woman
called Scarlett O'Hara and she's one of those women who is completely pathological
about her life; everything is organised and colour coded within an inch of its
life. She’s going out with John Smith who is very predictable and she has a
five year plan for her life. Then he has his mid-life crisis and decides to leave
her and go to a little village in Brazil to work on an archaeological site. So
that night she goes out and meets a guy called Red Butler, whose real name is
Daniel, but he had this great big shock of red hair so everyone calls him Red.
They have a one night stand and months later she finds out pregnant and she
doesn't know who the father is. Which is just unbelievable for a woman like Scarlett,
who is so organised and knows exactly when her period is due down to the last
second.
So
yes, as I had to write, it made sense to write about pregnancy.
You didn’t start
writing until a little later in your life. How did it come about?
Every
other writer I know has wanted to be a writer since they were in their mother's
womb. I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up and so yeah it was one of
those fabulous things, a sliding door moment.
I
was interested in night classes and I just happened upon a creative writing
class and I loved it. I still remember the moment, the eureka moment like ‘Ah,
that's what I want to be’. I was totally hooked from the very first moment. And
terrified. You had to read out stuff and I'd never done anything like that
before. We had this gorgeous teacher who was so gentle with everyone. She
always insisted that before you tear a piece to shreds you always had to come
up with five positive things about the work. So it was very encouraging and
very nurturing and I think if I’d had a different teacher then things might
have turned out differently. Because you don't arrive fully formed as a
fabulous writer, you’ve got to learn your craft and she was just an amazing
teacher. Just because you're a great writer doesn't mean you’re an amazing
teacher.
So
that was September when I joined the class and I started to write Saving Grace the following January. I sent
her an invitation to the first book launch and I thanked her in the acknowledgements
of Saving Grace but I'm sure she's
never read any of my books.
Would you ever like
to see your books made into film?
Oh
yeah! I want to be on the red carpet! I'd love to see how a film maker would
interpret my stories. I think that would be fascinating to see how it would
translate on the screen and see the characters come to life. I'd do it once,
just to see how it went. I know other authors go mad when they sell their books
and then the filmmakers change the end and they get tossed around. I don’t know
how I'd feel about that. I'd probably like it better. I’d probably think ‘Now why
didn't I think of that’.
This is you first
book tour, how has it been?
This
is my very first book tour but I've done some radio interview and lots of these
kinds of personal interviews. On this tour I’ve met loads of booksellers, which
is always very nice and they've taken me around stores and I’ve got to meet
lots of people.
Do you enjoy
interacting with your readers? On your website, social media and or course,
when you're in store?
Yes,
of course. Writing for me is a solitary pursuit so when I get comments on my
blog and on Facebook, it gets you out into the world a little bit rather than being
alone.
Finally,
what's next?
I’m
working on my fifth novel and trying to write a screen play for a film.
Hopefully once this fifth book is written, I'll be signed up for more but
either way, I'll keep on writing, that's as much as I know. Writing is a bug
you get infected with. Writing makes me feel good. It’s nice to have an
audience otherwise you're just sitting alone is a room talking to yourself.
All images copyright of Ciara Geraghty and her publishers, found online.
No comments:
Post a Comment