My grandmother had a pub there and we were part of a small and tight community of Catholics, outnumbered eight or nine to one by Protestants. For a few years I lived within walking distance of all the relatives on my father’s side. I was born in Belfast in 1967 and grew up in a town about five miles away, on the shores of Belfast Lough. Tell us about your own upbringing in Northern Ireland and how it has shaped you and your writing. This is not to say I found it easy to write a novel! Just that it felt like the next step.
Garland Sunday, the final one in my collection, had come in at 8,000 words, but I had written over 60,000 to get there. And simply in terms of length, my work had been going in that direction, each story longer than the last. I had no idea at the time, but In Silhouette was an early exploration of the themes at the heart of Trespasses: violence, loyalty, obsession. In terms of writing, the novel was definitely a natural progression from the short story. This might well be the case, but since Eleanor was in a position to sell a novel too, I will never know. Kevin Barry once said something along the lines that approaching a publisher with a short story collection is akin to dragging a dead cow into their office. Eleanor Birne, my agent, submitted my short stories along with the first three chapters of the novel, which became Trespasses. I did not manage that every day, but most days I did, and within three months I had what could be charitably called a first draft. I sat around for a week watching Netflix, then I made a deal with myself that I would force a draft down, writing 1,000 words a day until it was done. On and off I had been making notes and reading around an idea for a novel, and had accumulated 10,000 words or so. It occurred to me that I could not presume that I would have a long life.
Earlier that year I had been diagnosed with melanoma, which required painful surgery and a break from work. At that time I had 20 or so stories, a dozen of which seemed to sit well together – the makings of a collection, I suppose. It is set in the north of Ireland in the 1970s on the night a young woman’s life is changed by a murder she is witness to. In September 2019, I was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award for a piece called In Silhouette. I suspect it is due in no small part to a textbook studied by everyone who reached the age of 14 in an Irish school between 19 – Exploring English 1.” Was there pressure on you after publishing your story collection to turn out a novel or was it a natural progression for you? You said: “Irish people get short stories. You previously told Big Issue North how you stumbled into writing at age 47 and quickly found you were able to write short stories.
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