You visits me

Today I welcome the lovely Nuala Ní Chonchúir to my blog as part of her blog tour to celebrate the launch of her super debut novel You, which I just finished reading, and loved.

Nuala, what was the very first germ of the idea for You? Where were you at the time, and what were you doing?

It’s a while ago so it’s hard to remember exactly; I know I was living in Galway city, on the opposite side of the country to Dublin, where the novel is set. (Useful distance!) It began life as a short story in my first collection The Wind Across the Grass. I was enjoying writing in the girl’s voice (the whole thing grew from the character’s naive voice) and I just continued on with it. I write a lot about water and so it was a natural progression to write a novel about a river. Usually my work starts with a fusion of voice and mood and a vague situation and I just see where it goes. And so it was with this novel.

Did you have any rituals while you were writing it – time of day, clothing, chants?

I was working in a Writers’ Centre when I wrote it and I had a new-ish baby too, so I just grabbed time wherever, whenever, after work and at week-ends. Rituals are irrelevant when writing time is short, I find. Though I did play a CD of hits from 1980 while I wrote. And I had a big blue cardboard box full of research materials which I kept beside me.

The book is full of lovely childhood observations – one of my favourites: ‘Sometimes a ladybird will do a little yellow poo on your hand and it smells sour, but they only do that when they’re afraid.’ I know exactly what that smells like! Is there another moment from your childhood in the book that had always been waiting for this novel so it could be written about?

Oh my, so many of them, Adam. It took me a year to write the book and over that year I wrote down lots of those little memories, like the ‘frilly carrots’ that look like goldfish and the mother drinking Snowballs, which we considered very posh as kids. All the stuff about the river too is directly from my childhood – I grew up beside/in/on the river Liffey in Dublin.

I was a melancholic child, very observant and shy, so the girl in the book is basically a fictionalised version of the young me.

It’s set in 1980 – what is the significance of that year for you?

I turned ten that year (as does the girl-narrator in You). I always think that’s a big year for girls: it’s the first year of double digits in your age, which feels important, and you are moving towards puberty, sort of reluctantly leaving childhood behind. It may also have been the first year I really noticed current affairs, like the volcano in Washington, the Olympics in Moscow and the hunger strikes in Northerrn Ireland, all of which are mentioned in the book.

Have you, like the character in your novel, ever run away from home?

Yes. I got as far as the end of our street. I had my schoolbag with me and all I had in it was a pile of Ladybird books. My father came out and found me (I was waiting!) and chased me home. So nothing as serious as the running-away in the novel.

Can you tell me one thing about the book, or the writing of it, that you’ve not told anyone else in the world?

I was re-reading the book recently and came across a passage where the girl asks her Ma if she can get her ears pierced. The Ma says no. On the cover image the little girl is wearing ear-rings…

Adam, thanks a million for having me here on the penultimate stop on my virtual tour. Next week the tour ends back in Ireland at Eimear Ryan’s blog: http://eimearryan.wordpress.com/. I hope some of your readers will join me there.

Thanks for visiting, Nuala!

About You: It is Dublin, summer 1980; Kate Bush is on the radio, Nadia Comaneci is cleaning up at the Olympics and The Elephant Man is the film to see. In one house by the Liffey, a spiky but sensitive ten year old girl is minder to her troubled Ma and her two younger brothers. When a tragedy splits the family apart, the girl realises that the only person she can trust is herself, so she takes her future into her own hands. Sometimes heartbreaking but also charming and funny, You is a story about friendship and loyalty and changing your mind, set in rural county Dublin and Wales.

About Nuala: Born Dublin 1970, award-winning fiction writer and poet Nuala Ní Chonchúir lives in County Galway. Her novel You was published by New Island in April 2010; her third short fiction collection Nude was published by Salt in 2009; The Irish Times called it ‘a memorable achievement’. Nude was shortlisted for the 2010 Edge Hill Short Story Prize. She is fiction editor of Horizon Review.

www.nualanichonchuir.com
http://womenrulewriter.blogspot.com/