Author in conversation: Donal Ryan
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| Donal Ryan with Saoirse Behan and Dawn Behan at Woodbine Books. |
"She was very upset," he recalled during his visit yesterday to Woodbine Books, as part of the shop's programme for Irish Book Week. "Three years later I went back, but then left again."
Now he lectures on Creative Writing at the University of Limerick, at the same time continuing his own output of work. With five books already published, he's currently trying to find spare weeks to do the edits on his next one.
At the Woodbine Books afternoon conversation he recalled a childhood where there were always books around, and that he was regularly telling stories to his siblings. "I can't remember any of those stories today. But I was always scribbling things down. It was expected in the house that I would be a writer someday."
It didn't happen immediately. There was a variety of jobs. On a building site, in a meat factory. Along the way a law degree in University of Limerick, and the 'safe' job with the National Employment Rights Authority. All of which, as it happened, provided grist for the mill that was eventually to grind out his first book, and others. And there was the ghost.
Before meeting Anne-Marie who was to become his wife, he told the Woodbine audience, he had lived for years in a house which 'included a ghost'. He tried to write, talked about writing, began stories without finishing them. He now feels he generally wasted what should have been a very productive period. "Even the ghost was whispering at my shoulder, telling me to finish the damn things. I was living on my own in what was the equivalent of an artist's garret, but not producing anything."
Eventually he met Anne-Marie, they married, and he was still rabbiting on about writing while they watched television at home. Finally she told him to 'go upstairs and write that book'.
He got the message. Went 'upstairs', and eventually came back with The Thing About December. He has a very clear recollection of sending the manuscript to an agent for the first time. "I fully expected that it would get me a book contract in a few days. Instead it was returned with a compliments slip, 'not for me'. "It was worse because that was all. I had heard of rejections that came back with lots of notes and suggestions. But this was just 'not for me'."
Between that book and his next, The Spinning Heart, he gathered some 50 rejections before the second work suddenly garnered two publishers' interest. He took a deal that gave him a €4,000 advance. And later took a three-year career break from NERA. His book deal provided for a collection of short stories. "That was my choice. I thought it would be easy, I had several already written, a third of a book."
Except he found out that 'writer's block' is real. "I couldn't get anything down. But I also found that it's something which does end, that you have to work your way through it, even if it means just writing the same word over and over again."
He did get through it. A Slanting of the Sun was published in 2015. And in the last six years his writing has gathered a slew of longlisting, shortlisting, and sometimes winning in a number of Irish and international literary prize events. They include the Irish Book Awards, the Booker Prize, the International Dublin Literary Awards, the Guardian First Book Award, and the European Union Prize for Literature. His latest novel, From a Low and Quiet Sea, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
Does that list, in a short space of six years, make his head spin? "I suppose when you think it is just six years, it is short. But I just feel that I've been writing all of my life."
There are some special memories. "I always had a fantasy, since reading about Roddy Doyle calling his family to tell them he had been listed for the Booker Prize. I'm really glad that I was also able to make that phone call and see my fantasy come true."
Donal's writing style is unusual, which may have played a part both in the rejections and in the eventual acceptance of his books. "Agents don't always see beyond the commercial," he says, but adding that there are also very perceptive literary agents around.
His technique could at first be mistaken for 'stream of consciousness', but a closer look shows it to be carefully constructed, if not following classical use of dialogue, for instance. "For a long time, what I was writing wasn't me. I was trying to write in an 'upper class' language. I finally realised I had to put it down my own way."
That way was the language and the stories he had heard when working on construction sites, in the meat factory, and in the situations he came across while an inspector with NERA. He makes no apologies for having 'plundered' those experiences.
"I had friends on the sites. I later investigated situations where people worked as 'sub contractors' and were then left with nothing when the main contractor said, 'sorry, I'm bust'. I knew someone who had worked all his life, and when he was let go he found that in the system he had 'never worked' because his payments had never been recorded."
Those experiences provided the people, the theme and the language of The Spinning Heart, set in a then topical 'ghost estate' with the equally topical laid off construction workers and 'stranded' home buyers. The book explores their situations, each chapter taking the story forward in the mind of a different character. Donal says he picked this format because he had previously found that he became intensely involved with his main characters, and thought this might save some personal trauma. It didn't quite work. He still found himself strongly identifying with Bobby, a foreman trying to deal with the fallout of his developer boss leaving everyone in the lurch.
He also drew on his professional experiences for a key character, Farouk, in his latest book. Having dealt with many Syrians who came to Ireland seeking asylum and work, he became very aware of their experiences. "I got to know about families being trafficked, coming to Ireland effectively as bondaged workers. It's happening today in our country. And there are instances of people employed way below their skills. Someone working in a takeaway can well be a doctor."
And someone living in a house with a ghost can well be a writer, eventually. When he realises that writing is really hard work and needs to be got on with. Donal Ryan knows that. And, because he has contracts and deadlines, he goes to it in a disciplined way.
He writes for about three hours a day, a length of time he believes is as much as can be productive. Though that doesn't mean he isn't working through the rest of the day, thinking about plots, characters. "And the next book too, I can have the direction of that worked out in my head before I start writing it."
Writing in Ireland doesn't pay a full living, even for an author who has gathered a bushel of awards nominations and wins. So Donal Ryan's 'day job' with UofL is important. Not just for the money … it also gives him direct interaction with people who have a similar passion to his own, aged all the way from their 20s through to 70s. Even when you're finally comfortable in your own skin as a writer, that has to be enormously regenerating. "Yes, it's a lot of work, keeps me very busy, but I love doing it."
Finally, as ambassador for the inaugural Irish Book Week, Donal made a strong plea for support for independent bookshops in the face of internet book selling. "Places like Woodbine Books are the heart of their town," he said with a similar passion to what he clearly puts into his writing. "Why should people click on a website and import books from abroad, making Amazon's Jeff Bezos rich, when they have beautiful places like this? Warm, wonderful, with lovely people, and with the incomparable smell of new books?"
Why indeed?
All of Donal Ryan's books are available in Woodbine Books.
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| Donal Ryan got to recall schooldays stories with fellow Tipperary native Conor Williams. |
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