April 7, 2025 • 54 mins
In this episode, I chat with Lucy Caldwell about contemporary Irish literature's vibrant yet complex landscape, her latest novel, These Days, and profound philosophical insights. Growing up in Belfast during the Troubles in a "mixed marriage" family—Protestant father, Catholic mother—Caldwell developed a unique perspective that informs her award-winning writing.
Lucy describes writing during the pandemic and experiencing "a portal between worlds" as she researched the Blitz while living through COVID lockdowns.
Lucy Caldwell was born in Belfast in 1981. She is the author of three previous novels, several stage plays and radio dramas, and three collections of short stories. She won the BBC National Short Story Award in 2021 for “All the People Were Mean and Bad.” Other awards include the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the George Devine Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018, and in 2019, she was the editor of Being Various: New Irish Short Stories. In 2022, she was the recipient of the EM Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters for her body of work to date.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson-Beverly and I'm a
bibliophile.
Welcome to the Bookshop Podcast.
Each week, I present interviewswith authors, independent
bookshop owners and booksellersfrom around the globe and
publishing professionals.
To help the show reach morepeople, please share episodes
with friends and family and onsocial media, and remember to
(00:33):
subscribe and leave a reviewwherever you listen to this
podcast.
You're listening to episode 288.
Before I introduce you to thisweek's guest, a quick reminder
that this Thursday, april 10th,I'll be in conversation with
author and PulitzerPrize-winning journalist Edward
(00:54):
Humes at the Santa Barbara Clubin Santa Barbara, california.
This event is part of the SantaBarbara Lunch with an Author
Literary Series and requires areservation and prepayment.
To find out more about theseevents, you can go to my website
at mandyjacksonbeverlycom.
Forward slash events.
I look forward to introducingyou to some fabulous authors for
(01:18):
2025 at the Santa Barbara Clubin Santa Barbara, california.
Okay, let's get on with thisweek's episode.
Lucy Caldwell was born inBelfast in 1981.
She is the author of threeprevious novels, several stage
plays and radio dramas and threecollections of short stories.
She won the BBC National ShortStory Award in 2021 for All the
(01:43):
People Were Mean and Bad ShortStory Award in 2021 for All the
People Were Mean and Bad.
Other awards include the RooneyPrize for Irish Literature, the
George Devine Award, the DylanThomas Prize and a major
Individual Artist Award from theArts Council of Northern
Ireland.
She was elected a Fellow of theRoyal Society of Literature in
2018, and in 2019 she was theeditor of being Various New
(02:06):
Irish Short Stories.
In 2022, she was the recipientof the EM Forster Award from the
American Academy of Arts andLetters for her body of work to
date.
In 2023, lucy's novel theseDays won the Walter Scott Prize
for Historical Fiction.
Hi, lucy, and welcome to theshow.
(02:26):
It is fabulous to have you here.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
It's lovely to be here, and especially because I'm
here through a friend really,the writer Jan Carson, who is
such a fantastic writer, such agood friend, such a staunch
supporter of her peers and ofother Irish writers.
So so I'm grateful to her formaking the connection.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Jan said the same about you and I feel so blessed
to have you both in my life now.
It's a real treat and I got tosay Jan is such a hardworking
author.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
She is so dedicated, she works so phenomenally hard
and it's wonderful to see thesuccesses that she's having for
her work.
She's doing something reallyspecial, really unique, I think.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Yes, I completely agree.
And when she was here in personin Santa Barbara at the Lunch
with an Author Literary Seriesand then she taught a class in
Ojai, california, it was justgreat and she made sure
everybody in that audience knewabout contemporary Irish authors
.
You were mentioned multipletimes and, of course, the book
(03:30):
that you edited, being Various,which is absolutely superb.
Anyway, we'll talk about beingVarious a little later, but I
would love to begin withlearning about you and where
your love of reading and writingderived.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yeah, well, I am the eldest of three girls born to.
My mother is English from afamily of Irish Catholic descent
, and she was born in Bristolwhere she met my father.
My father's from NorthernIreland.
He's Ulster Protestant stock,probably originally from
Scotland, and so they havewhat's termed a mixed marriage
(04:07):
in Northern Ireland, which iswhere you have one parent
Protestant, one parent Catholic.
And they decided, when they fellin love and my mum moved to
Northern Ireland in 1975 andthey were going to have a family
together, they decided theywould bring up any children that
they had as neither Catholicnor Protestant, which was quite
(04:28):
unusual.
I mean, it's less unusual thanyou'd think, but at the time it
felt we were one of the onlyfamilies I knew really that
didn't go to church, but mysisters and I we were very, very
close to each other, very closeto my mum, adored my mum, very
close to my mum, adored my mumand much of my childhood, the
way that I remember it, when Icame across the Bronte siblings,
(04:50):
I had this rush of recognition,thinking that's what we did.
We lived in worlds of our ownand we would have these rolling
sagas, these imaginary worlds welived in, that would go through
any medium we had to hand.
We would write our characterstories, we would draw them, we
would make them out of Lego.
When my dad brought home acamcorder, we would film them.
(05:11):
It seems that my wholechildhood was this rolling
fantasy world that we lived in,and I think it was one of the
most difficult times of my life.
Actually, is I think about whenI felt that I had to grow up
and leave that world, you know,when I was 11, 12.
I still feel that pain and Ithink it's, you know, one of the
saving graces of my life that Ifound my way back to it,
(05:34):
because that's what I do.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
These days, you know.
Yeah, I find this reallyinteresting.
I've mentioned this before onthe show, but quite a few years
ago now I think I was in myearly 20s, so that's a long time
ago I read an article writtenby a psychologist and she wrote
about the psychologicalimportance of our emotional
growth every seven years.
(05:56):
So I became fascinated withthis concept and many years
later I was reminded of thisconcept after I'd had my two
sons, when the eldest turnedseven, and then again when the
youngest turned seven happenedto coincide when a few of our
pets started dying and I had toexplain to them, you know, what
(06:18):
happened to these animals, andit was at that moment that I
realized this was the time intheir lives that they learned
the difference between what wasreal and what was unreal.
You could say what was thefantasy world?
So death was a real shock.
It was a door opening to thiswhole other world, and I
(06:39):
remember that happening to metoo.
The article I spoke of earliermentioned that sometimes this
can show itself as night terrorsin children.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
It's interesting, it's encoded into so many things
, isn't it Like the Jesuitssaying give me a child till he's
seven and I'll show you the man.
You know the age at whichchildren are deemed responsible
for themselves, their actions.
I've definitely been throughthat death consciousness with my
own children, where theysuddenly start asking questions
(07:09):
about eternity.
So as a child, I remember Ithink I was about eight when I
really remember having that sortof consciousness you know the
immensity of that consciousnessthat it's hard to recalibrate.
It's hard, after you've hadthat, to understand that we all
(07:31):
live our lives pretending thatit's not the case, that we're
all going to die because we are.
My daughter is seven now, andso I've been through versions of
that with both my son, who'snow 10, and my daughter, and in
the last couple of years I cansee it surfacing in interesting
ways in the stories that I'vebeen through versions of that
with both my son, who's now 10,and my daughter in the last
couple of years.
I can see it surfacing ininteresting ways in the stories
that I've been writing the lastcouple of years.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Ah, so this explains the character, the young girl in
your latest novel, these Days.
That's fascinating.
I don't want to give too muchaway, but I can see the
connection now that we'respeaking about this topic.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Yeah, I remember the great writer, derry writer
Jennifer Johnson died just lastweek and I wrote a tribute to
her for the Irish Times.
And that was because anothersort of formative moment for me
would have been I was 13, and myEnglish teacher in school we
read Jennifer Johnson's book howMany Miles to Babylon with her
(08:24):
and she said it's a wonderfulhomework, which was to write an
extra chapter.
It could be anywhere in thebook that we wanted and I
decided to write an extra endingIn the book.
The main character he is toldthat he has it's set during the
Great War, the First World War,and the main character his best
friend, his childhood bestfriend is sentenced to death by
firing squad.
And the main character his bestfriend, his childhood best
(08:44):
friend is sentenced to death byfiring squad and he has to
command the firing squad.
Rather than this, he shoots hisfriend himself.
For this he is sentenced todeath.
So the book takes place in thehours the night before his
execution and I decided I wantedto stay with him and follow him
right up into those finalminutes, when the minutes become
(09:05):
moments.
And I became so absorbed withthis and I read Yeats.
Jennifer Johnson quotes Yeatsin the book and I took Yeats
from the school library and read.
Yeats fell in love with Yeatsand I remember that feeling of
it wasn't even so much creatinga world, it was tuning into a
different world until your worldfalls away.
(09:28):
And I'm taking this characterright up until that moment of
death and I remember thinkingthen this is all I want to do,
this is what I need to do.
So that was another veryimportant moment for me.
And how old were you?
Speaker 1 (09:43):
then I would have been 13.
Well, that's close to thatnumber seven, that rounding up
of 14.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
It is, isn't it yeah?
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Yeah, it's fascinating.
Let's talk about the book beingVarious, which you wrote the
introduction for and you edited.
In it you wrote about thespirit of being Irish.
Can you expand on this and howclimate, migration and refugees
are changing the way we thinkabout what makes a person Irish?
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Yes, so the book that I edited, being Various, is the
sick, in a series published byFaber, started by the legendary
editor David Marcus, and hebelieved that for a good
anthology you would putestablished, celebrated voices
alongside newcomers and thatthere was something really
exciting in that energy.
(10:31):
And after he died, the serieswas continued by Kevin Barry,
edited one, joseph O'Connor,edited another, deidre Madden,
and I've got a postcard here,mandy, that I can show you.
I'll describe it to all of yourlisteners.
This is the famous sepia tonedportrait of Ireland's writers
(10:51):
and you can see, you can stillbuy this postcard for sale in
Ireland.
And we've got James Joyce andSingh and Oscar Wilde and
Beckett and, you know, brendanBehan and Shaw and Yates and
Bram Stoker, patrick Kavanagh.
When I signed my first book deal, my sisters found a very
studious photograph of me.
I have a very blunt fringe andthick tortoiseshell glasses and
(11:12):
they tipped out, they stuck meon and tippexed my name in and
we all thought this washilarious, you know, and I was
young, I was in university whenI signed my first book deal.
It was just a big joke, thiscard, card.
But then I would look at it andthink, actually, where are the
women?
You know, where is Mary Lavin?
Where is Kate O'Brien?
Where's Edna O'Brien?
Where is Anne Enright?
(11:33):
You know, bringing it forward ageneration, where are these
stories?
And I always thought, if I wereto edit an anthology of Irish
writing, I would love it toinclude lots of women, maybe be
exclusively women.
And also I thought I would loveit to include lots of women,
maybe be exclusively women.
And also I thought I would loveto have a really good sense of
representation from the North,because as a Northern writer you
quite often get disregarded orleft off lists of Irish writers.
(11:57):
And then Sinead Gleeson did abeautiful anthology, seminal
anthology, called the Long GazeBack.
That was, 400 years of Irishwomen writers.
I contributed a story to it andat the Northern Irish launch
for that there were four of us,the four women, on stage and we
(12:18):
were looking at each other,thinking this has never happened
in our lives, in our careers.
We're never a stage full ofwomen.
You know this just hadn'thappened.
And so we said to Sinead youhave to do a sister anthology of
writers from the North, and Iwould have loved to have done it
myself, but Sinead was theright person to do it.
(12:39):
You know, she didn't know.
She was thinking, no, she's notNorthern, she's Southern, but
she had done such a brilliantjob with Long Gaze Back, it had
to be hers.
So after this was done, myeditor at Faber said if I were
to edit the volume, would I havea vision for it?
Because he was thinking, whenDavid Marcus started the series
(12:59):
there weren't as many outletsfor Irish fiction.
Now we have so many.
Now it's much more celebrated.
Had the anthology series runits course, it took me, I think,
just one night to think whatwould my vision be, and I
thought actually my vision wouldhave been a female anthology.
But now I think this question ofwhat makes a writer Irish it's
(13:22):
such a pressing one for acountry which, for a good couple
of hundred years, irishidentity has been predicated on
a sense of emigration, you know,and a sense of moving to other
places, you know, moving toCanada or moving to the US, or
moving to Australia, or moving,you know, emigrating away.
(13:43):
But we're reaching a pointwhere Ireland is becoming a
place that people are choosingto move to.
I think there's a substantialPolish population now in Ireland
, there's a substantialBrazilian population and people
are coming from all over theworld to Ireland in a way that
when I was growing up,especially in Northern Ireland,
people just didn't.
(14:04):
It wasn't somewhere that thepeople moved to.
So I thought this is reallyinteresting and this idea of
what is it that does make anIrish story.
I wanted to break that open alittle bit and so in this
anthology I commissioned a shortstory by a Chinese born writer
who had met and fallen in lovewith an Irishman and moved to
Dublin, raising an Irish sonthere.
(14:25):
A story by a Nigerian-bornwriter who came to Ireland as an
asylum seeker, Melatu Chikori,and spent years in the horrible
direct provision system, whichis when you're not allowed to
work, when your claim is beingprocessed but you live in these
appalling, inhumane, hostileconditions.
I have a writer, born inFinland, who chose to come to
(14:50):
Ireland in her 20s, married anIrishman, raised children,
divorced the Irishman but stayedin Ireland, who cried when I
asked her for a story becauseshe said everyone always refers
to her as a Finnish writer, notan Irish writer, even though
Ireland is a place that she'schosen.
Refers to her as a Finnishwriter, not an Irish writer,
even though Ireland is the placethat she's chosen.
A writer born Kit Duvall, bornin Birmingham to one Irish, one
(15:10):
Jamaican parent.
I just wanted to break it open alittle bit and think Ireland is
going through such a golden age.
The dazzle is so bright.
What are the stories we're nothearing?
And I think this anthology waspublished in 2019.
And since since then, I thinkthe questions have become even
more important about this senseof Ireland.
(15:32):
Looking into the future has tohave a radically generous way of
viewing Irishness, one that isnot hierarchical.
You know you cannot beconsidered not Irish, or second
citizen, second tier, becauseyou come from the North, for
example, or if you're notCatholic, or if you're not.
You know, when people think,what does an Irish person look
(15:54):
like?
You might think that it's oneof these.
You know bespectacled orbearded white men on the
postcard.
And that's what I wanted tochallenge, because I really do
think that the more stories wehave and the more ways we have
of being and understandingourselves, the richer we all are
, and that's something of what Iset to do with that anthology
(16:27):
fabulous authors and yourwonderful essay at the beginning
of the book.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
I think it would be a great book for high schoolers
to read in every high school allover the world.
The book reinforces that, whilewe all have differences in the
world, we are a diverse culturalmass, if you like.
We are all one.
We are all human, we all haveneeds and we need to be heard.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yes, it's about where , the places where you see
yourselves.
You know the stories and Ithink that I always find it
really interesting the way youknow, in a family, if someone
brings a new partner back, thefirst thing the family does is
start to tell a story.
You know, the family tells itsown foundational myths, its own
stories, and I think that worksat the level of a nation or of a
(17:11):
country.
You know the stories we tellourselves about how we came to
be, why we are the way we are,and writers are, I think, well
placed to be closer to thestories, or maybe the stories
that aren't serving us.
You know the like, the softwareprograms imprinted on our
hardware without our consent,and I think of some of the
(17:32):
stories.
One of the stories that I had toand I was glad to dismantle for
myself was the idea that thepram in the hallway is the enemy
of art.
Oh my gosh.
You know, and I grew upthinking that I couldn't be an
artist and a mother.
I'd always wanted to be amother my whole life.
I wanted to have children, knewI wanted to have children.
(17:52):
I had children, believing thatthat would be the end of my
creative life, and what a joy itwas to find that I only started
writing the stories that I nowknow I should be writing once I
had children.
And I think you can do that ona personal level.
You can also do that on a levelof national identity, a level
of religious identity, and Ithink it's interesting to think
(18:16):
what are these stories that maybe explaining something, but
also may be trapping?
Speaker 1 (18:22):
us.
That has given me a lot tothink about and it brings up
something that I wanted to askyou about In a Claire Armistead
interview.
You and Jan Carson were at theJFL International and after
listening to Jan read from theraptures, claire asked you about
magical realism and you said,quote you can love different
(18:44):
types of literature and then yourealize you can only write the
sort of stories that you can endquote In your latest novel,
these Days there are wisps ofmagical realism with Florence
and the Fox, as well as Emma andSylvia, and I don't want to
give too much of this fantasticstory away.
(19:04):
Emma and Sylvia, and I don'twant to give too much of this
fantastic story away.
But I wondered, were yousurprised?
Speaker 2 (19:13):
by this magical essence in the story, and did
the characters drive you intothis realm?
That's such an interestingquestion.
I think a lot of the work thatyou do as a writer is you have
to sharpen your instincts andquestion your defaults.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
That's interesting and true.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
I think in the context of that conversation,
the sort of wildly imaginativestories that Jan writes.
You know, someone opens awardrobe and their dead
grandmother is sitting in therereading the Belfast Telegraph.
I just know that my brain wouldnot work like that, you know.
I just know that a character ofmine would never open a
(19:50):
wardrobe and see their deadgrandmother.
It just wouldn't happen.
But I don't think that we livein logical worlds.
I think that there is magic allaround us.
I think that when we talk aboutintuition, when we talk about
synchronicity, when we talkabout visions or symbols that
(20:13):
come to us in dreams, all ofthat, to me that's a sort of I
suppose that's a sort of magicalrealism.
But if you're right, in in thebook, the section that you're
describing on florence, who'sthe mother, who's perhaps my
favorite character in the book abit of her has been frozen in
time because she lost when shewas was very young.
(20:34):
She lost her lover in theBattle of the Somme.
He, like so many from Ulster,died there, didn't come back and
although on one level she'sgone on, she's married a doctor.
She was lucky to marry, shethinks, so many women, so many
men were lost, so many womendidn't have the option to marry.
She's had three children,they're prosperous, and yet some
(21:00):
part of her soul is trapped inthe past and she realizes that
to move on she's going to haveto let her lover go, and she has
lived as if he might come backany day.
And so she decides she has tolet him go.
And then she, she has a momentwhere she's in her garden and
(21:22):
she sees this, this fox, and hisname is renard, which means fox
, and she knows that it's himand in the scene.
The way that I write it, the waythat I write a lot of my things
, is it has to be real and notreal on the same level at the
same time.
And so for Florence, on the onehand, the logical explanation
(21:46):
is there's a fox in her gardenand she's attributing some kind
of mystical encounter to it.
On the other hand, of courseit's real.
Renard's soul has come back inthe way that it can, in a way
that he knows that she'llunderstand to say goodbye.
And so I think, when I wouldsay I'm not a magic realist
(22:07):
writer, I'm not in a sort ofspecific way, in the way that
you know, there aren't anyflying carpets, there aren't any
, you know, flaming pillars.
There aren't dead grandmothersIn closets, in closets.
But at the same time, I like toallow there to be magic in the
(22:28):
work, as I think there is in oureveryday lives if we just tune
into it and are open to it andlet ourselves see it.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Yeah, you and I were speaking earlier about dreams
and specifically Jung, becausewe're both interested in his
work, and the fact that you havea kitten in the story struck me
as pertinent because cats areconsidered to be extremely
psychic and if you own a cat, orif you have a cat and let's be
(23:01):
honest here, because nobodyreally owns a cat, they choose
and own us then I think youwould have to agree with that
idea.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
You know, mandy, the hilarious thing is I have never
had a cat, I didn't grow up withpets, I hadn't had a cat and I
wrote a cat into these days andit was one of the things I was
trying to show that not just thehuman devastation but the
animal devastation, the bombing,the blitz was such that there
were packs of stray dogs, therewere cats without homes, there
(23:33):
were animals in the zoo thatneeds to be, you know, killed,
put down, and so I had this bagof kittens that had been
abandoned and my intention wasthis character tries to rescue a
kitten, but doesn't.
The kitten dies.
But I just couldn't bringmyself to kill this kitten and I
kept on thinking come on, it'stoo sentimental to let the
kitten live.
You have to kill this kitten,kitten.
(23:55):
And on the morning that I waskind of stealing myself to write
this scene that I just couldn'twrite, I happened to speak to
another northern Irish friend,the writer Glenn Patterson.
I was checking some facts aboutBelfast and he's a great
historian of the city and I saidto him oh, I'm dreading ending
this phone call because I haveto go and kill a kitten.
And he said oh, no, no, no, canthe kitten not live and he had
cats himself and I thought OK,and so then I decided I would
(24:18):
let this kitten live.
And then it's almost as if thiskitten came into my fiction.
And then we moved flat and theneighbors had a cat and the cat
said that a real cat startedwalking along the fence, would
jump through my study window andcome into my desk and this cat
got pregnant and we would strokeit and we could feel the
kittens and and I thought thisis so funny I started off with
(24:42):
the cat has come to me in myimagination through the pages of
my book.
Now it's materialized.
We have to have this kitten andwe were living in a rental
house.
We weren't allowed pets and Ithought we just have to have
this kitten.
So the litter was born.
There were only three of them.
One was a very pretty Siameselooking kitten that someone
claimed, and there were twosplotchy black and white kittens
(25:04):
.
One of them was a very prettylittle girl.
So my children chose the girlkitten and we said we'd collect
it when it was old enough.
That night I had a dream inwhich the boy kitten came to me
and said I want to be yourkitten, I love it.
In the morning the childrencame piling into the bedroom and
(25:25):
I always I ask my childrenevery morning you know, what did
you dream?
I think dreams are so important.
And I said to them, what didyou dream?
And my son said mummy, mummy,the boy kitten came to me in a
dream and said that he wants tobe our kitten.
And then, you know, mandy, youcould say that we're, we're
connected and we're dreamingeach other's dream.
Or maybe the kitten visited usin a dream.
So I rang the neighbours and Isaid you know, can we just come
(25:46):
back and see these kittens again?
Girl kitten hid behind the sofaand hissed at us.
Boy kitten came padding overand climbed onto my son's lap.
And I said to the neighbours,obviously I didn't say to them I
had a dream and I just saidlook, if we're going to take a
kitten, it has to be okay withthe children, so we'll take the
boy kitten.
And in fact, about a month agoI was having this awful
(26:09):
nightmare and into the dreamcame the cat, came my cat, and
chased away, scared away, thisthing that was trying to attack
me in the dream.
So I'm very much, yeah, we'reon the same wavelength there.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Oh, I love this whole connection.
It's strange because when I wasreading the story and the cat
came into the world, I thoughtto myself I wonder if Lucy knows
how deep she just stepped intothis realm.
And then, when the fox appeared, I thought to myself yes, she
does.
And now you've shared thisstory about your real cat.
(26:46):
I know there was something elseat work here.
Let's talk about your writing,because you write in different
formats plays, radio dramas,novels and short stories.
How far do you get into theidea of a story before you
decide which form it will take,or are you commissioned to write
(27:06):
a specific format?
Speaker 2 (27:08):
If I am hired or commissioned to do something
again, it's interesting whatwe're talking about I never make
a decision on a logical basis.
You know, I I go with what mygut says, I go with what my
instinct says.
So if I'm asked to do something, and I think I will be able to
do it, only once have I taken acommission.
When I was quite young I took atheatre commission for the
(27:30):
money.
I needed the money and I knewit was wrong at the time.
But I overrode my instinctbecause I needed the money and
it was a.
It didn't work, it was adisaster sort of psychically and
as a piece of art and and Ijust thought never again.
So I work quite intuitivelylike that but funnily enough, I
(27:50):
never start writing something inone form and then decided
something else.
For me the form and content haveto serve each other.
You know, it's not as if youcan take an idea and I've I've
trans.
You know I've I've adapted myown work.
I've adapted stage plays toradio.
I've adapted a short story fora radio.
(28:10):
You know, I've I've adaptedthings that already exist
between forms occasionally, butfor the most part I think the
key is being in control of thepossibilities and limitations of
each form, knowing the thingsthat you can do, and for me
there's no difference betweenthe idea and its execution.
You know, for me the piece ofart is the process, not the
(28:33):
product.
If that makes sense, yes,absolutely, it makes perfect
sense.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Lucy, you've spoken about the variousness of the
Irish story, but how do you seethe variousness of Irish history
playing out in the arts?
Speaker 2 (28:48):
I think we're at a really interesting moment.
If you look at the, even justto stay within the sphere of,
you know my own art, which isliterature, there are just so,
so many writers coming through,and you know a couple of books
that I've read recently.
I've just read a collection ofshort stories by a writer from
(29:11):
the north of Ireland called LedaMcQuinn and it's called
Everyone Still here.
It's published by the mightyStinging Fly Press, I think this
month, and the stories arephenomenal.
I think the opening story is amasterpiece.
It's called we All Go.
It's just incredible.
There's a novel being publishedlater on this year by Wendy
(29:32):
Erskine called the Benefactors,who's a very fine short story
writer, who happens to be mysecondary school English teacher
and we stayed friends after Ileft and I was actually one of
her first editors.
I published a story by her inbeing Various, which I'm very
proud that we have that veryspecial relationship.
Her novel is phenomenal.
(29:52):
It makes 90% of the prose youread feel flat and lifeless.
It's it's brimming withhumanity, it's full of voice,
it's just brilliant.
There's um uh, michael mcgeehis his debut close to home,
which is about young men andyoung men who've been maybe let
down by the good fridayagreement and who are struggling
(30:13):
, and it's about male violenceand it's about generational
trauma and violence set in, umknow, republican communities in
West Belfast.
That was that has done very,very well, deservedly so.
Another debut by Amy Walsh, awriter that I mentored, louise
Kennedy.
There are short stories byBernie McGill, which are
(30:34):
beautiful, so sensitive.
Rosemary Jenkinson, which arereally scabrous.
We've got all of these writersworking at the same time as
writers like David Park, who'svery underrated, and Glenn
Patterson, anna Burns, whoseMilkman is a masterpiece.
Louise Kennedy, trespasseslikewise.
There's this sense of all ofthis writing is coming.
(30:54):
There's this sense of all ofthis writing is coming and it's
interesting because we are 25years post the Good Friday
Agreement, the ceasefire, thebroad peace to the island and I
think a lot of the stories astory like Milkman, a story like
Trespasses could not be writtenin the direct aftermath of that
(31:17):
lived experience.
You know, it takes time tounderstand something and have
enough distance from somethingto start understanding it and
writing it and to know how todeal with some of that psychic
pain.
But also, I think there's amoment where we started off this
, this conversation, by talkinghow supportive writers are of
each other and I think therereally is a feeling among
(31:41):
writers in Northern Ireland ofbeing in it together and of
realising that everyone's gain,everyone's achievement, lifts
you all and makes it morepossible for all of us.
There's always been a verystrong crime.
I mean we haven't even touchedon crime writing, you know, for
(32:02):
a long time, in the absence ofany Truth and Reconciliation
Commission.
It was the crime writers andthe writers writing border
stories that were doing a lot ofthat, you know, interrogation
and difficult stories andturning over difficult things,
doing a lot of thatinterrogation and difficult
stories and turning overdifficult things.
So I think art and literaturein Northern Ireland has served,
(32:27):
it's had a really interestingmoment, despite the fact that it
is so chronically underfundedcompared to the rest of the UK
and compared to Ireland.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Is it mostly in the North where the arts are
underfunded?
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Yeah, I looked at the figures actually because I
didn't want to misquote them,and the per capita arts spending
in the Republic of Ireland isthe equivalent in sterling of
£25.90.
This is last year's figures.
In Northern Ireland it's £5.00,£7.00.
That's the disparity.
(32:55):
It's five pounds, seven pounds.
That's the disparity.
To give a bit of context, inWales it's £10.51 per capita.
So it's still substantiallyless.
And then what you get inNorthern Ireland is so many
people living below the povertyline, children, especially
people who are maybe thirdgeneration, unemployment,
(33:15):
chronic underfunding of citieslike Derry, no university, no
funding for the university there, no funding for the arts,
things like mobile librariesbeing taken away.
The writer Kerry New Doherty inher Debbie Finn Places writes
so beautifully and soexcoriatingly about what it
(33:37):
means to grow up in poverty andsee one lifeline to the arts
after another just taken away,and so I think there are a lot
of.
This is happening despite thelack of funding and not because
of it.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
I feel some of the most profound art appears in the
toughest of times, and whilethis isn't always the case, it
seems to be the time when thearts can change the world.
I recently interviewed Vinnyfrom Charlie Burns Bookshop and
I asked him what keeps him inGalway and he answered it's the
(34:18):
arts.
We have such a strong theatrecommunity here, and as I started
researching you, I learned thatGalway was where your first
play was performed.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
My debut play was done by the legendary Gary Hines
and Drew at Theatre.
That's right.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
That's right.
Yes, Vinnie proudly spoke aboutthis too.
How about you give ourlisteners a synopsis of these
Days?
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Yes, of course.
So these Days is a novel setduring the Belfast Blitz, and
the Belfast Blitz was the seriesof aerial raids by the
Luftwaffe during the SecondWorld War.
So it was during, veryspecifically, april to May 1941.
And not many people know aboutit, but the city was devastated
(35:10):
to the extent that we haveLuftwaffe pilots on record
flying over the burning citysaying, my God, what have we
done?
We have people saying Belfastis never going to come back from
this.
Belfast at the time was where alot of the industry was located
.
You know the rope works and theshipbuilding and the aircraft.
(35:31):
So in terms of the UK wareffort effort, it was very
important.
But people thought that theneutrality of Ireland Ireland at
the time very, very youngnation was neutral during the
second world war and peoplethought that the neutrality of
the Ireland as a whole mightprotect Northern Ireland.
This was a kind of wishfulthinking really, because because
(35:54):
of course all the industry wasthere, belfast was, was such a
target, but they thought itwouldn't happen and for a long
time it didn't happen and then,when it finally did happen, the
city was was devastated, some ofthe worst um aerial raids
outside of London, you know,when you think of the Blitz you
might think of um, you knowCoventry or Bristol or Liverpool
(36:16):
or you know, but you wouldn'tnecessarily think of Belfast,
and I hadn't really.
When my son was very young, oneof his favourite books was a
children's book called Pipo, andit's a board book.
I don't know if your listenerswill be familiar with it, but if
it made it over to the States.
But it's the life of a babyagainst the backdrop of the
(36:39):
Second World War and it's veryeasy.
Here's a little baby one, two,three stands in his cot.
What does he see?
And it's one of those booksthat's very satisfying to read
as an adult because you can see.
For the child they're justlooking at the baby and his
sisters going fishing with jamjars, but as an adult, you see
in the background the zeppelinsand the bombed out buildings and
(37:00):
the father at the end isdressed in uniform.
He's going away.
Maybe the baby will never seethe father again.
So as an adult, there's thisstory going on in the background
.
That makes it very satisfyingand I started to think so.
Many of my favorite writers are,you know, those great stylists
like Virginia Woolf and RosamundLehmann and Sylvia
(37:21):
Townsend-Warner and GrahamGreene and Henry Greene and
Louis McNeice they're allwriters of the London Blitz and
I started to think there's a.
There was a Belfast Blitz thatthat you know, I knew had
happened.
I didn't know very much aboutit and when I started
researching it I was completelyshocked myself to discover the
extent of it and it doesn'treally exist in much fiction.
(37:43):
There's one novel by RianneMoore called the Emperor of Ice
Cream, reissued recently by abrilliant small press.
That's it really, and I startedthinking there are all these
stories.
I started researching thestories because the Belfast
Blitz, um, people who werechildren during it were in.
(38:05):
This was the winter of 2019,they were then in their 80s, um,
and so as 2019 tipped into 2020, I'm sure we can all see where
this is going.
The book started gainingmomentum.
But also suddenly, once COVIDset in and our lockdown in the
UK overlapped almost entirelyonto the Blitz, you know, end of
(38:28):
March, april to May, and I wasspeaking to these people with
such an urgency I spoke to onewoman who was 103 about her
experiences of living throughthe Belfast Blitz and it felt so
precious to take these storiesand to preserve them and save
them and make something of themand occasionally I would set up
(38:50):
a conversation and by the timethe day came, that person would
have died.
Because we were losing ourelderly first of all, and I was
asking them their childhoodmemories.
And there was something elsethat was going on at the same
time, which was my children atthe time were two and five and I
was thinking what are theygoing to remember of this?
(39:11):
And I was trying to keep thingsnormal for them.
You know, my son turned six andso he got his first bike and we
taught him how to ride his bikeon the hour.
A day we were allowed to gooutside and I was thinking about
what it means to grow up in theTroubles in Belfast, what it
means to live through COVID andthe ways in which you don't get
(39:34):
to put your normal life on hold.
You know you don't get to pauseyour pregnancy, you don't get
to.
You know you don't get.
You still turn six, you stillhave your baby, you still like.
Life goes on in ways that areboth terrible and our salvation
(40:00):
terrible and our salvation.
And so I was writing every day,I would go to my desk and I
would be immersed in 1941 to theextent that it did feel more
real to me at times than theLondon that I was, that I was
then living through, and it feltat times like I had opened this
portal between worlds.
And I understood it in a waythat there was a lot of idle
talk of blitz spirit, which inthe UK media was, you know,
(40:23):
stiff upper lip and you know,keep calm and carry on and we're
good in a crisis.
But I understood it in afundamentally different way.
That was the radicalprovisionality.
You know, we had no idea iflife would ever return to normal
, what that normal might looklike.
We had no idea how deadly thisvirus was going to be.
We had no idea if our days werelimited, you know, we had no
(40:44):
idea, in the same way, that thepeople in the Blitz just had to
carry on with life, because whatelse can you do?
Speaker 1 (40:53):
So I had this profound new understanding of it
, I think Everything you havejust explained comes through in
the book and I love what yousaid about life goes on.
You're still pregnant, youstill have a birthday.
In the written synopsis of thenovel these days is the line
quote after all, emma thinks, ifone is to survive, one must
(41:15):
survive for something.
End quote.
I didn't read the synopsisuntil after I'd read the novel
and when I read that sentence itconfirmed for me that the truth
of these days lies in thecourage of your female
characters and theirrelationship with war.
War is the antagonist in thisstory.
(41:37):
What are your thoughts on this?
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Yes, I think that in times of extremity, maybe that
we understand something ofourselves.
That might be courage, thatmight not be.
I think it's at those times,those times of extremity, you
(41:59):
make decisions, you understandthings about the life that
you're living and the life thatyou should be living.
You know, I found it sostriking during COVID how many
people would split up from along-term partner or find a new
partner or decide they weregiving up their job or they were
moving to the country.
People made radical decisionsquite fast and I think it's that
(42:23):
sort of clarity that whensomeone is dying, you know if
you're at the bedside of someonewho's dying.
It's so clear that we just needto love each other and we just
need to forgive.
And there are certain moments,I think, certain moments when
we're in extremis, that itbecomes clear how we should be
(42:43):
living and the ways we try to.
We don't live our lives becausewe're scared scared of what
others might think of us orscared ourselves and all of the
women in my book, the war itknocks them out of their groove,
in good ways or bad ways.
They suddenly question, or havethe chance to question, the
(43:07):
route their life might otherwisehave taken, and then that is
when they come face.
You know, have to confrontthese questions of what is this
life that I'm living, Is itworth?
Speaker 1 (43:20):
it and I might add, what do I need to do with my
life to make me feel fulfilled?
I won't go into it too much here, but a few years ago I had an
episode with my heart and I wentin for a procedure and which
was going to be just, you know,90 minute surgery, but I ended
(43:41):
up bleeding and it went to about.
I think it was like nine and ahalf hours later I woke up with
a tube down my throat and I wasin ICU for six days.
It wasn't until I got home Ibegan to think about the process
of healing, the long process ofhealing emotionally and
(44:01):
physically, and I started tothink about what I was doing,
how the most important thing tome was to give back to the arts
and how it would feel if Ididn't do this, and there was
just an empty void in my lifewhen I thought about that.
So that is why I do what I do.
I do the podcast to supportindependent bookshop owners and
(44:27):
booksellers and authors, and Ido in-person events with authors
and people in the community,because I understand that in a
single moment it's all gone, andthat's what I try to explain to
people now, as you wereexplaining about the story of
(44:48):
the women in your book.
This is it.
This is all we have this momentand, as you said earlier,
everything is about love.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
Yes, you have to keep that in, mandy and thank you
for sharing that.
And I wonder, did you feelanything symbolic in that?
It was your heart bursting open, the way that you talk about it
, about wanting to be of serviceand community, and your hands,
as you were talking, there wassomething expanding from your
(45:20):
chest centre.
Did you feel?
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Yeah, I did, you know , when I was in the ICU ward, it
was it's crazy in there and Ihad tubes coming out of me
everywhere and they couldn'tfigure out what was actually
happening with my heart after awhile.
So they ended up having to putthis.
It's called a butterflysomething.
It's a tube that goes throughyour neck and into your heart
(45:47):
and it's amazing, you can see.
I mean, they get all of thisinformation that is needed, and
so they kind of explained to mewhat was going to happen.
And there were quite a fewpeople in the room, you know,
and, because it's a researchhospital, the young guy who did
this procedure on me I think itwas his first time and I just
(46:10):
remembered wondering how does hefeel, because this was serious
stuff and I just quietly spoketo him and I said you know I
have perfect faith in you andyour work.
I know you can do this, in youand your work.
(46:32):
I know you can do this.
And afterwards he said to methat was the last thing he
expected me to say, and so, yeah, I guess I did think about it
and I realized that patience andlove it truly is what it's
about, what life is about I justenvisioned love all around this
doctor.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
Beautiful and what a gift.
And it's one of those momentswhere you think, you know, and
they happen so often, if youthink what if the whole of my
life, all the circumstances, thechoices, the decisions have
been so intricately carefullyorchestrated to put me in the
place to deliver the message tosomeone else that they need to
(47:10):
hear?
And I love you know there'ssuch a tension between in a
novel, of course you're incontrol of everything and you
don't give a character, you know, a burst heart unless you're in
control of the symbolism or thewisdom of the novel is in
control of that.
But I think it's so interestingto think of the ways that we
can live our life, as if everysingle interaction is a chance,
(47:35):
is orchestrated, is a chance forus to do or be something, a
chance for us to be better.
You know I love the.
I was in India recently.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
I saw your photos on Instagram.
It looked absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
Yeah, it was incredible.
And I went to a Ramakrishnatemple with a Hindu friend of
mine who's a devotee ofRamakrishna, and we went to do
Saraswati Puja.
You know, saraswati, thegoddess of the upper chakra, the
goddess of the third eye, thegoddess of poetry of the upper
chakra is a goddess of the thirdeye, the goddess of poetry, and
my friend was launching a bookand so we went to, you know, pay
(48:14):
our homage, and Ramakrishna,one of the Swami Vivekananda,
who talks about this world.
He describes it as this worldis a gymnasium.
We're here to get stronger atloving and we have all of these
tests and all of theseexperiences that are solely so
that we can get better at loving.
(48:36):
And I think that sometimes, youknow, I'm going through kind of
a humdrum day and you think,how can every interaction I have
be symbolic or be meaningful?
As if this were a novel, as ifthis were, you know, a beautiful
algebraic equation, you knowthat comes out perfectly in the
(48:57):
end.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
What you said about the gymnasium of love oh my
goodness, that's so beautiful,lucy.
Before we go, I would love tohear about the masterclass that
you teach through Faber Academy.
I would love to hear about themasterclass that you teach
through Faber Academy.
Is that available in person andonline?
Speaker 2 (49:13):
I just kept it online .
It used to be in person and Iwas always quite resistant to
teaching online because I thinkthere's something very special
about being in person, but thenagain, one of the you know the
curse that turned out to be ablessing is in COVID.
It went online as it had to andI started getting people from
all over the world, which wasjust incredible.
(49:33):
Currently, I have someone whosets an alarm for 3.45 in Sydney
and does my course between 4and 6.30am and I have people
who've done it from India, fromthe States, from Dubai, from all
over Europe, from Russia, andjust the different, the fresh
perspectives that people bring.
(49:54):
Because my masterclass I loveit.
It's a cornerstone of my ownwriting practice, my masterclass
on the short story.
But I see it as it's not metelling people what to do.
I can only write the storiesthat I can write, and if anyone
else tried to write my sort ofstories, it wouldn't work.
But there are stories thatevery single person, and only
(50:16):
that person, can write, and sowhat we do is we read stories
and we discuss how they work andwe discuss techniques, and what
I want to do is for everysingle person to get writing the
stories that they, and onlythey, can.
There's a lovely I love theSufi image of creation as this
(50:38):
big vibrational, almost like aharp, you know, and every single
person has to vibrate their ownparticular note and if you're
trying to vibrate yourneighbours or if you're not in
tune with yourself, the whole ofCosmos is out of sync and I
love that and I always think Iwant every person to be
vibrating their own particularstories, and so I always think
(50:59):
I'm not so much teaching aswe're exploring together.
Speaker 1 (51:03):
And that's why you're such a great teacher.
Now is this course selective.
Speaker 2 (51:07):
No, it's not selective, so it's first come,
first serve.
You do have to be on thewaiting list to get a chance at
getting a place, but all thatentails is sending an email and
asking to be informed when thenext booking opens up Now these
Days is published in the USA bySJP, which is an imprint of
Zando, and SJP is Sarah JessicaParker's publishing company.
Speaker 1 (51:32):
I am so excited about Zando because I interviewed
Gillian Flynn last year inperson and she also has an
imprint through Zando.
So how did you end up gettingpublished by Sarah Jessica
Parker through Zando in the US?
Speaker 2 (51:47):
Well, it's just about to come out, the book with
Zando and with Sarah JessicaParker's imprint, sjp Lit.
She is doing a really brilliantthing where she is highlighting
the importance of there beingvarious stories for women, you
know, and and telling multiplestories, um, by and about and
(52:11):
for a woman.
And so this, this book, fit inwith with her, her ethos, and it
was an editor at Zando, aneditor, very interesting editor,
called Cailin, who has an Irishconnection herself.
Her father, um, is originallyfrom Mississippi.
Um, african-american, went toDerry in Ireland, fell in love
(52:32):
with an Irish girl and marriedher, and then Cailin and her
sibling were, I think, born inLondon and then raised in New
York.
And so she's got a veryinteresting connection to her
own sense of Irishness and againto the sense of everything we
were talking about, aboutexpanding the possibilities of
what it means to be Irish or tobe of Irishness, and again to
this sense of everything we weretalking about about expanding
the possibilities of what itmeans to be Irish or to be of
(52:52):
Irish heritage.
And so she just felt she was.
I was very grateful that shehad read and liked the novel,
because I felt this is the righthome.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
Yeah, well, they're a wonderful press and I love what
Zando is doing, and they arelucky to have you.
Well, you're at the end of yourday, I'm at the beginning of
mine, so I guess, even though wecould talk all day, I'd better
let you go.
Speaker 2 (53:17):
This is my teaching evening, in fact, so I will be
teaching from about seven, so Ifeel very invigorated by our
conversation.
Mandy, it's been such apleasure.
Speaker 1 (53:29):
Likewise.
It's been great chatting withyou too.
You take care.
Thank you so much.
Bye-bye.
You've been listening to myconversation with author Lucy
Caldwell about her new bookthese Days.
To help the show reach morepeople, please share episodes
with friends and family and onsocial media, and remember to
subscribe and leave a reviewwherever you listen to this
(53:51):
podcast.
To find out more about theBookshop Podcast, go to
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review wherever you listen tothe show.
You can also follow me at MandyJackson Beverly on Instagram
and Facebook and on YouTube atthe Bookshop Podcast.
If you have a favorite indiebookshop that you'd like to
(54:14):
suggest we have on the podcast,I'd love to hear from you via
the contact form atthebookshoppodcastcom.
The Bookshop Podcast is writtenand produced by me, Mandy
Jackson Beverly, Theme musicprovided by Brian Beverly,
executive assistant to Mandy,Adrienne Otterhan, and graphic
design by Frances Perala.
(54:35):
Thanks for listening and I'llsee you next time.
Bye.
Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson-Beverly and I'm a
bibliophile.
Welcome to the Bookshop Podcast.
Each week, I present interviewswith authors, independent
bookshop owners and booksellersfrom around the globe and
publishing professionals.
To help the show reach morepeople, please share episodes
with friends and family and onsocial media, and remember to
(00:33):
subscribe and leave a reviewwherever you listen to this
podcast.
You're listening to episode 288.
Before I introduce you to thisweek's guest, a quick reminder
that this Thursday, april 10th,I'll be in conversation with
author and PulitzerPrize-winning journalist Edward
(00:54):
Humes at the Santa Barbara Clubin Santa Barbara, california.
This event is part of the SantaBarbara Lunch with an Author
Literary Series and requires areservation and prepayment.
To find out more about theseevents, you can go to my website
at mandyjacksonbeverlycom.
Forward slash events.
I look forward to introducingyou to some fabulous authors for
(01:18):
2025 at the Santa Barbara Clubin Santa Barbara, california.
Okay, let's get on with thisweek's episode.
Lucy Caldwell was born inBelfast in 1981.
She is the author of threeprevious novels, several stage
plays and radio dramas and threecollections of short stories.
She won the BBC National ShortStory Award in 2021 for All the
(01:43):
People Were Mean and Bad ShortStory Award in 2021 for All the
People Were Mean and Bad.
Other awards include the RooneyPrize for Irish Literature, the
George Devine Award, the DylanThomas Prize and a major
Individual Artist Award from theArts Council of Northern
Ireland.
She was elected a Fellow of theRoyal Society of Literature in
2018, and in 2019 she was theeditor of being Various New
(02:06):
Irish Short Stories.
In 2022, she was the recipientof the EM Forster Award from the
American Academy of Arts andLetters for her body of work to
date.
In 2023, lucy's novel theseDays won the Walter Scott Prize
for Historical Fiction.
Hi, lucy, and welcome to theshow.
(02:26):
It is fabulous to have you here.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
It's lovely to be here, and especially because I'm
here through a friend really,the writer Jan Carson, who is
such a fantastic writer, such agood friend, such a staunch
supporter of her peers and ofother Irish writers.
So so I'm grateful to her formaking the connection.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Jan said the same about you and I feel so blessed
to have you both in my life now.
It's a real treat and I got tosay Jan is such a hardworking
author.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
She is so dedicated, she works so phenomenally hard
and it's wonderful to see thesuccesses that she's having for
her work.
She's doing something reallyspecial, really unique, I think.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Yes, I completely agree.
And when she was here in personin Santa Barbara at the Lunch
with an Author Literary Seriesand then she taught a class in
Ojai, california, it was justgreat and she made sure
everybody in that audience knewabout contemporary Irish authors
.
You were mentioned multipletimes and, of course, the book
(03:30):
that you edited, being Various,which is absolutely superb.
Anyway, we'll talk about beingVarious a little later, but I
would love to begin withlearning about you and where
your love of reading and writingderived.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Yeah, well, I am the eldest of three girls born to.
My mother is English from afamily of Irish Catholic descent
, and she was born in Bristolwhere she met my father.
My father's from NorthernIreland.
He's Ulster Protestant stock,probably originally from
Scotland, and so they havewhat's termed a mixed marriage
(04:07):
in Northern Ireland, which iswhere you have one parent
Protestant, one parent Catholic.
And they decided, when they fellin love and my mum moved to
Northern Ireland in 1975 andthey were going to have a family
together, they decided theywould bring up any children that
they had as neither Catholicnor Protestant, which was quite
(04:28):
unusual.
I mean, it's less unusual thanyou'd think, but at the time it
felt we were one of the onlyfamilies I knew really that
didn't go to church, but mysisters and I we were very, very
close to each other, very closeto my mum, adored my mum, very
close to my mum, adored my mumand much of my childhood, the
way that I remember it, when Icame across the Bronte siblings,
(04:50):
I had this rush of recognition,thinking that's what we did.
We lived in worlds of our ownand we would have these rolling
sagas, these imaginary worlds welived in, that would go through
any medium we had to hand.
We would write our characterstories, we would draw them, we
would make them out of Lego.
When my dad brought home acamcorder, we would film them.
(05:11):
It seems that my wholechildhood was this rolling
fantasy world that we lived in,and I think it was one of the
most difficult times of my life.
Actually, is I think about whenI felt that I had to grow up
and leave that world, you know,when I was 11, 12.
I still feel that pain and Ithink it's, you know, one of the
saving graces of my life that Ifound my way back to it,
(05:34):
because that's what I do.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
These days, you know.
Yeah, I find this reallyinteresting.
I've mentioned this before onthe show, but quite a few years
ago now I think I was in myearly 20s, so that's a long time
ago I read an article writtenby a psychologist and she wrote
about the psychologicalimportance of our emotional
growth every seven years.
(05:56):
So I became fascinated withthis concept and many years
later I was reminded of thisconcept after I'd had my two
sons, when the eldest turnedseven, and then again when the
youngest turned seven happenedto coincide when a few of our
pets started dying and I had toexplain to them, you know, what
(06:18):
happened to these animals, andit was at that moment that I
realized this was the time intheir lives that they learned
the difference between what wasreal and what was unreal.
You could say what was thefantasy world?
So death was a real shock.
It was a door opening to thiswhole other world, and I
(06:39):
remember that happening to metoo.
The article I spoke of earliermentioned that sometimes this
can show itself as night terrorsin children.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
It's interesting, it's encoded into so many things
, isn't it Like the Jesuitssaying give me a child till he's
seven and I'll show you the man.
You know the age at whichchildren are deemed responsible
for themselves, their actions.
I've definitely been throughthat death consciousness with my
own children, where theysuddenly start asking questions
(07:09):
about eternity.
So as a child, I remember Ithink I was about eight when I
really remember having that sortof consciousness you know the
immensity of that consciousnessthat it's hard to recalibrate.
It's hard, after you've hadthat, to understand that we all
(07:31):
live our lives pretending thatit's not the case, that we're
all going to die because we are.
My daughter is seven now, andso I've been through versions of
that with both my son, who'snow 10, and my daughter, and in
the last couple of years I cansee it surfacing in interesting
ways in the stories that I'vebeen through versions of that
with both my son, who's now 10,and my daughter in the last
couple of years.
I can see it surfacing ininteresting ways in the stories
that I've been writing the lastcouple of years.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Ah, so this explains the character, the young girl in
your latest novel, these Days.
That's fascinating.
I don't want to give too muchaway, but I can see the
connection now that we'respeaking about this topic.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Yeah, I remember the great writer, derry writer
Jennifer Johnson died just lastweek and I wrote a tribute to
her for the Irish Times.
And that was because anothersort of formative moment for me
would have been I was 13, and myEnglish teacher in school we
read Jennifer Johnson's book howMany Miles to Babylon with her
(08:24):
and she said it's a wonderfulhomework, which was to write an
extra chapter.
It could be anywhere in thebook that we wanted and I
decided to write an extra endingIn the book.
The main character he is toldthat he has it's set during the
Great War, the First World War,and the main character his best
friend, his childhood bestfriend is sentenced to death by
firing squad.
And the main character his bestfriend, his childhood best
(08:44):
friend is sentenced to death byfiring squad and he has to
command the firing squad.
Rather than this, he shoots hisfriend himself.
For this he is sentenced todeath.
So the book takes place in thehours the night before his
execution and I decided I wantedto stay with him and follow him
right up into those finalminutes, when the minutes become
(09:05):
moments.
And I became so absorbed withthis and I read Yeats.
Jennifer Johnson quotes Yeatsin the book and I took Yeats
from the school library and read.
Yeats fell in love with Yeatsand I remember that feeling of
it wasn't even so much creatinga world, it was tuning into a
different world until your worldfalls away.
(09:28):
And I'm taking this characterright up until that moment of
death and I remember thinkingthen this is all I want to do,
this is what I need to do.
So that was another veryimportant moment for me.
And how old were you?
Speaker 1 (09:43):
then I would have been 13.
Well, that's close to thatnumber seven, that rounding up
of 14.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
It is, isn't it yeah?
Speaker 1 (09:50):
Yeah, it's fascinating.
Let's talk about the book beingVarious, which you wrote the
introduction for and you edited.
In it you wrote about thespirit of being Irish.
Can you expand on this and howclimate, migration and refugees
are changing the way we thinkabout what makes a person Irish?
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Yes, so the book that I edited, being Various, is the
sick, in a series published byFaber, started by the legendary
editor David Marcus, and hebelieved that for a good
anthology you would putestablished, celebrated voices
alongside newcomers and thatthere was something really
exciting in that energy.
(10:31):
And after he died, the serieswas continued by Kevin Barry,
edited one, joseph O'Connor,edited another, deidre Madden,
and I've got a postcard here,mandy, that I can show you.
I'll describe it to all of yourlisteners.
This is the famous sepia tonedportrait of Ireland's writers
(10:51):
and you can see, you can stillbuy this postcard for sale in
Ireland.
And we've got James Joyce andSingh and Oscar Wilde and
Beckett and, you know, brendanBehan and Shaw and Yates and
Bram Stoker, patrick Kavanagh.
When I signed my first book deal, my sisters found a very
studious photograph of me.
I have a very blunt fringe andthick tortoiseshell glasses and
(11:12):
they tipped out, they stuck meon and tippexed my name in and
we all thought this washilarious, you know, and I was
young, I was in university whenI signed my first book deal.
It was just a big joke, thiscard, card.
But then I would look at it andthink, actually, where are the
women?
You know, where is Mary Lavin?
Where is Kate O'Brien?
Where's Edna O'Brien?
Where is Anne Enright?
(11:33):
You know, bringing it forward ageneration, where are these
stories?
And I always thought, if I wereto edit an anthology of Irish
writing, I would love it toinclude lots of women, maybe be
exclusively women.
And also I thought I would loveit to include lots of women,
maybe be exclusively women.
And also I thought I would loveto have a really good sense of
representation from the North,because as a Northern writer you
quite often get disregarded orleft off lists of Irish writers.
(11:57):
And then Sinead Gleeson did abeautiful anthology, seminal
anthology, called the Long GazeBack.
That was, 400 years of Irishwomen writers.
I contributed a story to it andat the Northern Irish launch
for that there were four of us,the four women, on stage and we
(12:18):
were looking at each other,thinking this has never happened
in our lives, in our careers.
We're never a stage full ofwomen.
You know this just hadn'thappened.
And so we said to Sinead youhave to do a sister anthology of
writers from the North, and Iwould have loved to have done it
myself, but Sinead was theright person to do it.
(12:39):
You know, she didn't know.
She was thinking, no, she's notNorthern, she's Southern, but
she had done such a brilliantjob with Long Gaze Back, it had
to be hers.
So after this was done, myeditor at Faber said if I were
to edit the volume, would I havea vision for it?
Because he was thinking, whenDavid Marcus started the series
(12:59):
there weren't as many outletsfor Irish fiction.
Now we have so many.
Now it's much more celebrated.
Had the anthology series runits course, it took me, I think,
just one night to think whatwould my vision be, and I
thought actually my vision wouldhave been a female anthology.
But now I think this question ofwhat makes a writer Irish it's
(13:22):
such a pressing one for acountry which, for a good couple
of hundred years, irishidentity has been predicated on
a sense of emigration, you know,and a sense of moving to other
places, you know, moving toCanada or moving to the US, or
moving to Australia, or moving,you know, emigrating away.
(13:43):
But we're reaching a pointwhere Ireland is becoming a
place that people are choosingto move to.
I think there's a substantialPolish population now in Ireland
, there's a substantialBrazilian population and people
are coming from all over theworld to Ireland in a way that
when I was growing up,especially in Northern Ireland,
people just didn't.
(14:04):
It wasn't somewhere that thepeople moved to.
So I thought this is reallyinteresting and this idea of
what is it that does make anIrish story.
I wanted to break that open alittle bit and so in this
anthology I commissioned a shortstory by a Chinese born writer
who had met and fallen in lovewith an Irishman and moved to
Dublin, raising an Irish sonthere.
(14:25):
A story by a Nigerian-bornwriter who came to Ireland as an
asylum seeker, Melatu Chikori,and spent years in the horrible
direct provision system, whichis when you're not allowed to
work, when your claim is beingprocessed but you live in these
appalling, inhumane, hostileconditions.
I have a writer, born inFinland, who chose to come to
(14:50):
Ireland in her 20s, married anIrishman, raised children,
divorced the Irishman but stayedin Ireland, who cried when I
asked her for a story becauseshe said everyone always refers
to her as a Finnish writer, notan Irish writer, even though
Ireland is a place that she'schosen.
Refers to her as a Finnishwriter, not an Irish writer,
even though Ireland is the placethat she's chosen.
A writer born Kit Duvall, bornin Birmingham to one Irish, one
(15:10):
Jamaican parent.
I just wanted to break it open alittle bit and think Ireland is
going through such a golden age.
The dazzle is so bright.
What are the stories we're nothearing?
And I think this anthology waspublished in 2019.
And since since then, I thinkthe questions have become even
more important about this senseof Ireland.
(15:32):
Looking into the future has tohave a radically generous way of
viewing Irishness, one that isnot hierarchical.
You know you cannot beconsidered not Irish, or second
citizen, second tier, becauseyou come from the North, for
example, or if you're notCatholic, or if you're not.
You know, when people think,what does an Irish person look
(15:54):
like?
You might think that it's oneof these.
You know bespectacled orbearded white men on the
postcard.
And that's what I wanted tochallenge, because I really do
think that the more stories wehave and the more ways we have
of being and understandingourselves, the richer we all are
, and that's something of what Iset to do with that anthology
(16:27):
fabulous authors and yourwonderful essay at the beginning
of the book.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
I think it would be a great book for high schoolers
to read in every high school allover the world.
The book reinforces that, whilewe all have differences in the
world, we are a diverse culturalmass, if you like.
We are all one.
We are all human, we all haveneeds and we need to be heard.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yes, it's about where , the places where you see
yourselves.
You know the stories and Ithink that I always find it
really interesting the way youknow, in a family, if someone
brings a new partner back, thefirst thing the family does is
start to tell a story.
You know, the family tells itsown foundational myths, its own
stories, and I think that worksat the level of a nation or of a
(17:11):
country.
You know the stories we tellourselves about how we came to
be, why we are the way we are,and writers are, I think, well
placed to be closer to thestories, or maybe the stories
that aren't serving us.
You know the like, the softwareprograms imprinted on our
hardware without our consent,and I think of some of the
(17:32):
stories.
One of the stories that I had toand I was glad to dismantle for
myself was the idea that thepram in the hallway is the enemy
of art.
Oh my gosh.
You know, and I grew upthinking that I couldn't be an
artist and a mother.
I'd always wanted to be amother my whole life.
I wanted to have children, knewI wanted to have children.
(17:52):
I had children, believing thatthat would be the end of my
creative life, and what a joy itwas to find that I only started
writing the stories that I nowknow I should be writing once I
had children.
And I think you can do that ona personal level.
You can also do that on a levelof national identity, a level
of religious identity, and Ithink it's interesting to think
(18:16):
what are these stories that maybe explaining something, but
also may be trapping?
Speaker 1 (18:22):
us.
That has given me a lot tothink about and it brings up
something that I wanted to askyou about In a Claire Armistead
interview.
You and Jan Carson were at theJFL International and after
listening to Jan read from theraptures, claire asked you about
magical realism and you said,quote you can love different
(18:44):
types of literature and then yourealize you can only write the
sort of stories that you can endquote In your latest novel,
these Days there are wisps ofmagical realism with Florence
and the Fox, as well as Emma andSylvia, and I don't want to
give too much of this fantasticstory away.
(19:04):
Emma and Sylvia, and I don'twant to give too much of this
fantastic story away.
But I wondered, were yousurprised?
Speaker 2 (19:13):
by this magical essence in the story, and did
the characters drive you intothis realm?
That's such an interestingquestion.
I think a lot of the work thatyou do as a writer is you have
to sharpen your instincts andquestion your defaults.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
That's interesting and true.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
I think in the context of that conversation,
the sort of wildly imaginativestories that Jan writes.
You know, someone opens awardrobe and their dead
grandmother is sitting in therereading the Belfast Telegraph.
I just know that my brain wouldnot work like that, you know.
I just know that a character ofmine would never open a
(19:50):
wardrobe and see their deadgrandmother.
It just wouldn't happen.
But I don't think that we livein logical worlds.
I think that there is magic allaround us.
I think that when we talk aboutintuition, when we talk about
synchronicity, when we talkabout visions or symbols that
(20:13):
come to us in dreams, all ofthat, to me that's a sort of I
suppose that's a sort of magicalrealism.
But if you're right, in in thebook, the section that you're
describing on florence, who'sthe mother, who's perhaps my
favorite character in the book abit of her has been frozen in
time because she lost when shewas was very young.
(20:34):
She lost her lover in theBattle of the Somme.
He, like so many from Ulster,died there, didn't come back and
although on one level she'sgone on, she's married a doctor.
She was lucky to marry, shethinks, so many women, so many
men were lost, so many womendidn't have the option to marry.
She's had three children,they're prosperous, and yet some
(21:00):
part of her soul is trapped inthe past and she realizes that
to move on she's going to haveto let her lover go, and she has
lived as if he might come backany day.
And so she decides she has tolet him go.
And then she, she has a momentwhere she's in her garden and
(21:22):
she sees this, this fox, and hisname is renard, which means fox
, and she knows that it's himand in the scene.
The way that I write it, the waythat I write a lot of my things
, is it has to be real and notreal on the same level at the
same time.
And so for Florence, on the onehand, the logical explanation
(21:46):
is there's a fox in her gardenand she's attributing some kind
of mystical encounter to it.
On the other hand, of courseit's real.
Renard's soul has come back inthe way that it can, in a way
that he knows that she'llunderstand to say goodbye.
And so I think, when I wouldsay I'm not a magic realist
(22:07):
writer, I'm not in a sort ofspecific way, in the way that
you know, there aren't anyflying carpets, there aren't any
, you know, flaming pillars.
There aren't dead grandmothersIn closets, in closets.
But at the same time, I like toallow there to be magic in the
(22:28):
work, as I think there is in oureveryday lives if we just tune
into it and are open to it andlet ourselves see it.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Yeah, you and I were speaking earlier about dreams
and specifically Jung, becausewe're both interested in his
work, and the fact that you havea kitten in the story struck me
as pertinent because cats areconsidered to be extremely
psychic and if you own a cat, orif you have a cat and let's be
(23:01):
honest here, because nobodyreally owns a cat, they choose
and own us then I think youwould have to agree with that
idea.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
You know, mandy, the hilarious thing is I have never
had a cat, I didn't grow up withpets, I hadn't had a cat and I
wrote a cat into these days andit was one of the things I was
trying to show that not just thehuman devastation but the
animal devastation, the bombing,the blitz was such that there
were packs of stray dogs, therewere cats without homes, there
(23:33):
were animals in the zoo thatneeds to be, you know, killed,
put down, and so I had this bagof kittens that had been
abandoned and my intention wasthis character tries to rescue a
kitten, but doesn't.
The kitten dies.
But I just couldn't bringmyself to kill this kitten and I
kept on thinking come on, it'stoo sentimental to let the
kitten live.
You have to kill this kitten,kitten.
(23:55):
And on the morning that I waskind of stealing myself to write
this scene that I just couldn'twrite, I happened to speak to
another northern Irish friend,the writer Glenn Patterson.
I was checking some facts aboutBelfast and he's a great
historian of the city and I saidto him oh, I'm dreading ending
this phone call because I haveto go and kill a kitten.
And he said oh, no, no, no, canthe kitten not live and he had
cats himself and I thought OK,and so then I decided I would
(24:18):
let this kitten live.
And then it's almost as if thiskitten came into my fiction.
And then we moved flat and theneighbors had a cat and the cat
said that a real cat startedwalking along the fence, would
jump through my study window andcome into my desk and this cat
got pregnant and we would strokeit and we could feel the
kittens and and I thought thisis so funny I started off with
(24:42):
the cat has come to me in myimagination through the pages of
my book.
Now it's materialized.
We have to have this kitten andwe were living in a rental
house.
We weren't allowed pets and Ithought we just have to have
this kitten.
So the litter was born.
There were only three of them.
One was a very pretty Siameselooking kitten that someone
claimed, and there were twosplotchy black and white kittens
(25:04):
.
One of them was a very prettylittle girl.
So my children chose the girlkitten and we said we'd collect
it when it was old enough.
That night I had a dream inwhich the boy kitten came to me
and said I want to be yourkitten, I love it.
In the morning the childrencame piling into the bedroom and
(25:25):
I always I ask my childrenevery morning you know, what did
you dream?
I think dreams are so important.
And I said to them, what didyou dream?
And my son said mummy, mummy,the boy kitten came to me in a
dream and said that he wants tobe our kitten.
And then, you know, mandy, youcould say that we're, we're
connected and we're dreamingeach other's dream.
Or maybe the kitten visited usin a dream.
So I rang the neighbours and Isaid you know, can we just come
(25:46):
back and see these kittens again?
Girl kitten hid behind the sofaand hissed at us.
Boy kitten came padding overand climbed onto my son's lap.
And I said to the neighbours,obviously I didn't say to them I
had a dream and I just saidlook, if we're going to take a
kitten, it has to be okay withthe children, so we'll take the
boy kitten.
And in fact, about a month agoI was having this awful
(26:09):
nightmare and into the dreamcame the cat, came my cat, and
chased away, scared away, thisthing that was trying to attack
me in the dream.
So I'm very much, yeah, we'reon the same wavelength there.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Oh, I love this whole connection.
It's strange because when I wasreading the story and the cat
came into the world, I thoughtto myself I wonder if Lucy knows
how deep she just stepped intothis realm.
And then, when the fox appeared, I thought to myself yes, she
does.
And now you've shared thisstory about your real cat.
(26:46):
I know there was something elseat work here.
Let's talk about your writing,because you write in different
formats plays, radio dramas,novels and short stories.
How far do you get into theidea of a story before you
decide which form it will take,or are you commissioned to write
(27:06):
a specific format?
Speaker 2 (27:08):
If I am hired or commissioned to do something
again, it's interesting whatwe're talking about I never make
a decision on a logical basis.
You know, I I go with what mygut says, I go with what my
instinct says.
So if I'm asked to do something, and I think I will be able to
do it, only once have I taken acommission.
When I was quite young I took atheatre commission for the
(27:30):
money.
I needed the money and I knewit was wrong at the time.
But I overrode my instinctbecause I needed the money and
it was a.
It didn't work, it was adisaster sort of psychically and
as a piece of art and and Ijust thought never again.
So I work quite intuitivelylike that but funnily enough, I
(27:50):
never start writing something inone form and then decided
something else.
For me the form and content haveto serve each other.
You know, it's not as if youcan take an idea and I've I've
trans.
You know I've I've adapted myown work.
I've adapted stage plays toradio.
I've adapted a short story fora radio.
(28:10):
You know, I've I've adaptedthings that already exist
between forms occasionally, butfor the most part I think the
key is being in control of thepossibilities and limitations of
each form, knowing the thingsthat you can do, and for me
there's no difference betweenthe idea and its execution.
You know, for me the piece ofart is the process, not the
(28:33):
product.
If that makes sense, yes,absolutely, it makes perfect
sense.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Lucy, you've spoken about the variousness of the
Irish story, but how do you seethe variousness of Irish history
playing out in the arts?
Speaker 2 (28:48):
I think we're at a really interesting moment.
If you look at the, even justto stay within the sphere of,
you know my own art, which isliterature, there are just so,
so many writers coming through,and you know a couple of books
that I've read recently.
I've just read a collection ofshort stories by a writer from
(29:11):
the north of Ireland called LedaMcQuinn and it's called
Everyone Still here.
It's published by the mightyStinging Fly Press, I think this
month, and the stories arephenomenal.
I think the opening story is amasterpiece.
It's called we All Go.
It's just incredible.
There's a novel being publishedlater on this year by Wendy
(29:32):
Erskine called the Benefactors,who's a very fine short story
writer, who happens to be mysecondary school English teacher
and we stayed friends after Ileft and I was actually one of
her first editors.
I published a story by her inbeing Various, which I'm very
proud that we have that veryspecial relationship.
Her novel is phenomenal.
(29:52):
It makes 90% of the prose youread feel flat and lifeless.
It's it's brimming withhumanity, it's full of voice,
it's just brilliant.
There's um uh, michael mcgeehis his debut close to home,
which is about young men andyoung men who've been maybe let
down by the good fridayagreement and who are struggling
(30:13):
, and it's about male violenceand it's about generational
trauma and violence set in, umknow, republican communities in
West Belfast.
That was that has done very,very well, deservedly so.
Another debut by Amy Walsh, awriter that I mentored, louise
Kennedy.
There are short stories byBernie McGill, which are
(30:34):
beautiful, so sensitive.
Rosemary Jenkinson, which arereally scabrous.
We've got all of these writersworking at the same time as
writers like David Park, who'svery underrated, and Glenn
Patterson, anna Burns, whoseMilkman is a masterpiece.
Louise Kennedy, trespasseslikewise.
There's this sense of all ofthis writing is coming.
(30:54):
There's this sense of all ofthis writing is coming and it's
interesting because we are 25years post the Good Friday
Agreement, the ceasefire, thebroad peace to the island and I
think a lot of the stories astory like Milkman, a story like
Trespasses could not be writtenin the direct aftermath of that
(31:17):
lived experience.
You know, it takes time tounderstand something and have
enough distance from somethingto start understanding it and
writing it and to know how todeal with some of that psychic
pain.
But also, I think there's amoment where we started off this
, this conversation, by talkinghow supportive writers are of
each other and I think therereally is a feeling among
(31:41):
writers in Northern Ireland ofbeing in it together and of
realising that everyone's gain,everyone's achievement, lifts
you all and makes it morepossible for all of us.
There's always been a verystrong crime.
I mean we haven't even touchedon crime writing, you know, for
(32:02):
a long time, in the absence ofany Truth and Reconciliation
Commission.
It was the crime writers andthe writers writing border
stories that were doing a lot ofthat, you know, interrogation
and difficult stories andturning over difficult things,
doing a lot of thatinterrogation and difficult
stories and turning overdifficult things.
So I think art and literaturein Northern Ireland has served,
(32:27):
it's had a really interestingmoment, despite the fact that it
is so chronically underfundedcompared to the rest of the UK
and compared to Ireland.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Is it mostly in the North where the arts are
underfunded?
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Yeah, I looked at the figures actually because I
didn't want to misquote them,and the per capita arts spending
in the Republic of Ireland isthe equivalent in sterling of
£25.90.
This is last year's figures.
In Northern Ireland it's £5.00,£7.00.
That's the disparity.
(32:55):
It's five pounds, seven pounds.
That's the disparity.
To give a bit of context, inWales it's £10.51 per capita.
So it's still substantiallyless.
And then what you get inNorthern Ireland is so many
people living below the povertyline, children, especially
people who are maybe thirdgeneration, unemployment,
(33:15):
chronic underfunding of citieslike Derry, no university, no
funding for the university there, no funding for the arts,
things like mobile librariesbeing taken away.
The writer Kerry New Doherty inher Debbie Finn Places writes
so beautifully and soexcoriatingly about what it
(33:37):
means to grow up in poverty andsee one lifeline to the arts
after another just taken away,and so I think there are a lot
of.
This is happening despite thelack of funding and not because
of it.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
I feel some of the most profound art appears in the
toughest of times, and whilethis isn't always the case, it
seems to be the time when thearts can change the world.
I recently interviewed Vinnyfrom Charlie Burns Bookshop and
I asked him what keeps him inGalway and he answered it's the
(34:18):
arts.
We have such a strong theatrecommunity here, and as I started
researching you, I learned thatGalway was where your first
play was performed.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
My debut play was done by the legendary Gary Hines
and Drew at Theatre.
That's right.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
That's right.
Yes, Vinnie proudly spoke aboutthis too.
How about you give ourlisteners a synopsis of these
Days?
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Yes, of course.
So these Days is a novel setduring the Belfast Blitz, and
the Belfast Blitz was the seriesof aerial raids by the
Luftwaffe during the SecondWorld War.
So it was during, veryspecifically, april to May 1941.
And not many people know aboutit, but the city was devastated
(35:10):
to the extent that we haveLuftwaffe pilots on record
flying over the burning citysaying, my God, what have we
done?
We have people saying Belfastis never going to come back from
this.
Belfast at the time was where alot of the industry was located
.
You know the rope works and theshipbuilding and the aircraft.
(35:31):
So in terms of the UK wareffort effort, it was very
important.
But people thought that theneutrality of Ireland Ireland at
the time very, very youngnation was neutral during the
second world war and peoplethought that the neutrality of
the Ireland as a whole mightprotect Northern Ireland.
This was a kind of wishfulthinking really, because because
(35:54):
of course all the industry wasthere, belfast was, was such a
target, but they thought itwouldn't happen and for a long
time it didn't happen and then,when it finally did happen, the
city was was devastated, some ofthe worst um aerial raids
outside of London, you know,when you think of the Blitz you
might think of um, you knowCoventry or Bristol or Liverpool
(36:16):
or you know, but you wouldn'tnecessarily think of Belfast,
and I hadn't really.
When my son was very young, oneof his favourite books was a
children's book called Pipo, andit's a board book.
I don't know if your listenerswill be familiar with it, but if
it made it over to the States.
But it's the life of a babyagainst the backdrop of the
(36:39):
Second World War and it's veryeasy.
Here's a little baby one, two,three stands in his cot.
What does he see?
And it's one of those booksthat's very satisfying to read
as an adult because you can see.
For the child they're justlooking at the baby and his
sisters going fishing with jamjars, but as an adult, you see
in the background the zeppelinsand the bombed out buildings and
(37:00):
the father at the end isdressed in uniform.
He's going away.
Maybe the baby will never seethe father again.
So as an adult, there's thisstory going on in the background
.
That makes it very satisfyingand I started to think so.
Many of my favorite writers are,you know, those great stylists
like Virginia Woolf and RosamundLehmann and Sylvia
(37:21):
Townsend-Warner and GrahamGreene and Henry Greene and
Louis McNeice they're allwriters of the London Blitz and
I started to think there's a.
There was a Belfast Blitz thatthat you know, I knew had
happened.
I didn't know very much aboutit and when I started
researching it I was completelyshocked myself to discover the
extent of it and it doesn'treally exist in much fiction.
(37:43):
There's one novel by RianneMoore called the Emperor of Ice
Cream, reissued recently by abrilliant small press.
That's it really, and I startedthinking there are all these
stories.
I started researching thestories because the Belfast
Blitz, um, people who werechildren during it were in.
(38:05):
This was the winter of 2019,they were then in their 80s, um,
and so as 2019 tipped into 2020, I'm sure we can all see where
this is going.
The book started gainingmomentum.
But also suddenly, once COVIDset in and our lockdown in the
UK overlapped almost entirelyonto the Blitz, you know, end of
(38:28):
March, april to May, and I wasspeaking to these people with
such an urgency I spoke to onewoman who was 103 about her
experiences of living throughthe Belfast Blitz and it felt so
precious to take these storiesand to preserve them and save
them and make something of themand occasionally I would set up
(38:50):
a conversation and by the timethe day came, that person would
have died.
Because we were losing ourelderly first of all, and I was
asking them their childhoodmemories.
And there was something elsethat was going on at the same
time, which was my children atthe time were two and five and I
was thinking what are theygoing to remember of this?
(39:11):
And I was trying to keep thingsnormal for them.
You know, my son turned six andso he got his first bike and we
taught him how to ride his bikeon the hour.
A day we were allowed to gooutside and I was thinking about
what it means to grow up in theTroubles in Belfast, what it
means to live through COVID andthe ways in which you don't get
(39:34):
to put your normal life on hold.
You know you don't get to pauseyour pregnancy, you don't get
to.
You know you don't get.
You still turn six, you stillhave your baby, you still like.
Life goes on in ways that areboth terrible and our salvation
(40:00):
terrible and our salvation.
And so I was writing every day,I would go to my desk and I
would be immersed in 1941 to theextent that it did feel more
real to me at times than theLondon that I was, that I was
then living through, and it feltat times like I had opened this
portal between worlds.
And I understood it in a waythat there was a lot of idle
talk of blitz spirit, which inthe UK media was, you know,
(40:23):
stiff upper lip and you know,keep calm and carry on and we're
good in a crisis.
But I understood it in afundamentally different way.
That was the radicalprovisionality.
You know, we had no idea iflife would ever return to normal
, what that normal might looklike.
We had no idea how deadly thisvirus was going to be.
We had no idea if our days werelimited, you know, we had no
(40:44):
idea, in the same way, that thepeople in the Blitz just had to
carry on with life, because whatelse can you do?
Speaker 1 (40:53):
So I had this profound new understanding of it
, I think Everything you havejust explained comes through in
the book and I love what yousaid about life goes on.
You're still pregnant, youstill have a birthday.
In the written synopsis of thenovel these days is the line
quote after all, emma thinks, ifone is to survive, one must
(41:15):
survive for something.
End quote.
I didn't read the synopsisuntil after I'd read the novel
and when I read that sentence itconfirmed for me that the truth
of these days lies in thecourage of your female
characters and theirrelationship with war.
War is the antagonist in thisstory.
(41:37):
What are your thoughts on this?
Speaker 2 (41:39):
Yes, I think that in times of extremity, maybe that
we understand something ofourselves.
That might be courage, thatmight not be.
I think it's at those times,those times of extremity, you
(41:59):
make decisions, you understandthings about the life that
you're living and the life thatyou should be living.
You know, I found it sostriking during COVID how many
people would split up from along-term partner or find a new
partner or decide they weregiving up their job or they were
moving to the country.
People made radical decisionsquite fast and I think it's that
(42:23):
sort of clarity that whensomeone is dying, you know if
you're at the bedside of someonewho's dying.
It's so clear that we just needto love each other and we just
need to forgive.
And there are certain moments,I think, certain moments when
we're in extremis, that itbecomes clear how we should be
(42:43):
living and the ways we try to.
We don't live our lives becausewe're scared scared of what
others might think of us orscared ourselves and all of the
women in my book, the war itknocks them out of their groove,
in good ways or bad ways.
They suddenly question, or havethe chance to question, the
(43:07):
route their life might otherwisehave taken, and then that is
when they come face.
You know, have to confrontthese questions of what is this
life that I'm living, Is itworth?
Speaker 1 (43:20):
it and I might add, what do I need to do with my
life to make me feel fulfilled?
I won't go into it too much here, but a few years ago I had an
episode with my heart and I wentin for a procedure and which
was going to be just, you know,90 minute surgery, but I ended
(43:41):
up bleeding and it went to about.
I think it was like nine and ahalf hours later I woke up with
a tube down my throat and I wasin ICU for six days.
It wasn't until I got home Ibegan to think about the process
of healing, the long process ofhealing emotionally and
(44:01):
physically, and I started tothink about what I was doing,
how the most important thing tome was to give back to the arts
and how it would feel if Ididn't do this, and there was
just an empty void in my lifewhen I thought about that.
So that is why I do what I do.
I do the podcast to supportindependent bookshop owners and
(44:27):
booksellers and authors, and Ido in-person events with authors
and people in the community,because I understand that in a
single moment it's all gone, andthat's what I try to explain to
people now, as you wereexplaining about the story of
(44:48):
the women in your book.
This is it.
This is all we have this momentand, as you said earlier,
everything is about love.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
Yes, you have to keep that in, mandy and thank you
for sharing that.
And I wonder, did you feelanything symbolic in that?
It was your heart bursting open, the way that you talk about it
, about wanting to be of serviceand community, and your hands,
as you were talking, there wassomething expanding from your
(45:20):
chest centre.
Did you feel?
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Yeah, I did, you know , when I was in the ICU ward, it
was it's crazy in there and Ihad tubes coming out of me
everywhere and they couldn'tfigure out what was actually
happening with my heart after awhile.
So they ended up having to putthis.
It's called a butterflysomething.
It's a tube that goes throughyour neck and into your heart
(45:47):
and it's amazing, you can see.
I mean, they get all of thisinformation that is needed, and
so they kind of explained to mewhat was going to happen.
And there were quite a fewpeople in the room, you know,
and, because it's a researchhospital, the young guy who did
this procedure on me I think itwas his first time and I just
(46:10):
remembered wondering how does hefeel, because this was serious
stuff and I just quietly spoketo him and I said you know I
have perfect faith in you andyour work.
I know you can do this, in youand your work.
(46:32):
I know you can do this.
And afterwards he said to methat was the last thing he
expected me to say, and so, yeah, I guess I did think about it
and I realized that patience andlove it truly is what it's
about, what life is about I justenvisioned love all around this
doctor.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
Beautiful and what a gift.
And it's one of those momentswhere you think, you know, and
they happen so often, if youthink what if the whole of my
life, all the circumstances, thechoices, the decisions have
been so intricately carefullyorchestrated to put me in the
place to deliver the message tosomeone else that they need to
(47:10):
hear?
And I love you know there'ssuch a tension between in a
novel, of course you're incontrol of everything and you
don't give a character, you know, a burst heart unless you're in
control of the symbolism or thewisdom of the novel is in
control of that.
But I think it's so interestingto think of the ways that we
can live our life, as if everysingle interaction is a chance,
(47:35):
is orchestrated, is a chance forus to do or be something, a
chance for us to be better.
You know I love the.
I was in India recently.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
I saw your photos on Instagram.
It looked absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
Yeah, it was incredible.
And I went to a Ramakrishnatemple with a Hindu friend of
mine who's a devotee ofRamakrishna, and we went to do
Saraswati Puja.
You know, saraswati, thegoddess of the upper chakra, the
goddess of the third eye, thegoddess of poetry of the upper
chakra is a goddess of the thirdeye, the goddess of poetry, and
my friend was launching a bookand so we went to, you know, pay
(48:14):
our homage, and Ramakrishna,one of the Swami Vivekananda,
who talks about this world.
He describes it as this worldis a gymnasium.
We're here to get stronger atloving and we have all of these
tests and all of theseexperiences that are solely so
that we can get better at loving.
(48:36):
And I think that sometimes, youknow, I'm going through kind of
a humdrum day and you think,how can every interaction I have
be symbolic or be meaningful?
As if this were a novel, as ifthis were, you know, a beautiful
algebraic equation, you knowthat comes out perfectly in the
(48:57):
end.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
What you said about the gymnasium of love oh my
goodness, that's so beautiful,lucy.
Before we go, I would love tohear about the masterclass that
you teach through Faber Academy.
I would love to hear about themasterclass that you teach
through Faber Academy.
Is that available in person andonline?
Speaker 2 (49:13):
I just kept it online .
It used to be in person and Iwas always quite resistant to
teaching online because I thinkthere's something very special
about being in person, but thenagain, one of the you know the
curse that turned out to be ablessing is in COVID.
It went online as it had to andI started getting people from
all over the world, which wasjust incredible.
(49:33):
Currently, I have someone whosets an alarm for 3.45 in Sydney
and does my course between 4and 6.30am and I have people
who've done it from India, fromthe States, from Dubai, from all
over Europe, from Russia, andjust the different, the fresh
perspectives that people bring.
(49:54):
Because my masterclass I loveit.
It's a cornerstone of my ownwriting practice, my masterclass
on the short story.
But I see it as it's not metelling people what to do.
I can only write the storiesthat I can write, and if anyone
else tried to write my sort ofstories, it wouldn't work.
But there are stories thatevery single person, and only
(50:16):
that person, can write, and sowhat we do is we read stories
and we discuss how they work andwe discuss techniques, and what
I want to do is for everysingle person to get writing the
stories that they, and onlythey, can.
There's a lovely I love theSufi image of creation as this
(50:38):
big vibrational, almost like aharp, you know, and every single
person has to vibrate their ownparticular note and if you're
trying to vibrate yourneighbours or if you're not in
tune with yourself, the whole ofCosmos is out of sync and I
love that and I always think Iwant every person to be
vibrating their own particularstories, and so I always think
(50:59):
I'm not so much teaching aswe're exploring together.
Speaker 1 (51:03):
And that's why you're such a great teacher.
Now is this course selective.
Speaker 2 (51:07):
No, it's not selective, so it's first come,
first serve.
You do have to be on thewaiting list to get a chance at
getting a place, but all thatentails is sending an email and
asking to be informed when thenext booking opens up Now these
Days is published in the USA bySJP, which is an imprint of
Zando, and SJP is Sarah JessicaParker's publishing company.
Speaker 1 (51:32):
I am so excited about Zando because I interviewed
Gillian Flynn last year inperson and she also has an
imprint through Zando.
So how did you end up gettingpublished by Sarah Jessica
Parker through Zando in the US?
Speaker 2 (51:47):
Well, it's just about to come out, the book with
Zando and with Sarah JessicaParker's imprint, sjp Lit.
She is doing a really brilliantthing where she is highlighting
the importance of there beingvarious stories for women, you
know, and and telling multiplestories, um, by and about and
(52:11):
for a woman.
And so this, this book, fit inwith with her, her ethos, and it
was an editor at Zando, aneditor, very interesting editor,
called Cailin, who has an Irishconnection herself.
Her father, um, is originallyfrom Mississippi.
Um, african-american, went toDerry in Ireland, fell in love
(52:32):
with an Irish girl and marriedher, and then Cailin and her
sibling were, I think, born inLondon and then raised in New
York.
And so she's got a veryinteresting connection to her
own sense of Irishness and againto the sense of everything we
were talking about, aboutexpanding the possibilities of
what it means to be Irish or tobe of Irishness, and again to
this sense of everything we weretalking about about expanding
the possibilities of what itmeans to be Irish or to be of
(52:52):
Irish heritage.
And so she just felt she was.
I was very grateful that shehad read and liked the novel,
because I felt this is the righthome.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
Yeah, well, they're a wonderful press and I love what
Zando is doing, and they arelucky to have you.
Well, you're at the end of yourday, I'm at the beginning of
mine, so I guess, even though wecould talk all day, I'd better
let you go.
Speaker 2 (53:17):
This is my teaching evening, in fact, so I will be
teaching from about seven, so Ifeel very invigorated by our
conversation.
Mandy, it's been such apleasure.
Speaker 1 (53:29):
Likewise.
It's been great chatting withyou too.
You take care.
Thank you so much.
Bye-bye.
You've been listening to myconversation with author Lucy
Caldwell about her new bookthese Days.
To help the show reach morepeople, please share episodes
with friends and family and onsocial media, and remember to
subscribe and leave a reviewwherever you listen to this
(53:51):
podcast.
To find out more about theBookshop Podcast, go to
thebookshoppodcastcom and makesure to subscribe and leave a
review wherever you listen tothe show.
You can also follow me at MandyJackson Beverly on Instagram
and Facebook and on YouTube atthe Bookshop Podcast.
If you have a favorite indiebookshop that you'd like to
(54:14):
suggest we have on the podcast,I'd love to hear from you via
the contact form atthebookshoppodcastcom.
The Bookshop Podcast is writtenand produced by me, Mandy
Jackson Beverly, Theme musicprovided by Brian Beverly,
executive assistant to Mandy,Adrienne Otterhan, and graphic
design by Frances Perala.
(54:35):
Thanks for listening and I'llsee you next time.
Bye.
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