Critical Mick

Reviews Free of Rules.

Reviews by the Clown that All Other Critics Want to Strangle with a Black Turtleneck

Words that Skinny Dip

Geraldine McMenamin, author of The Same Cloth sets Mick straight on identity, truth and betrayal. on the Oscar Wilde Centre at Trinity College, and on reading gravestone epitaths and shunning works of literary genius. Also! The coolest former occupation of any writer ever interviewed. An unruly email interview, December 2008.

Critical Mick: A man leaps aboard Iarnród Éireann train number seven, his secret instructions: identify and mind Geraldine McMenamin- a woman he has never met before. What description has he be given? How would he recognize her?

Geraldine McMenamin: Look out for the dark haired woman wearing earrings…it is a mystery, right?

CM: To act inconspicuous, that man buries his nose in a copy of your debut novel, The Same Cloth. He wonders if you, like your protagonist Helen Rafferty, have been kicked out of English boarding schools? And had a loved one kidnapped? And flown in a small aircraft? And lied to the cops? And hidden in the graveyard at night, like the scene on the book's cover?

Critical Mick's review of Geraldine McMenamin's The Same Cloth

GMcM: That is the most non-inconspicuous thing anyone could ever do! I would probably move seats and strike up a conversation with him. Anyone who has copy of my novel is worth talking to. GMcM con't: Some people who have read The Same Cloth assume that I have based the main character, Helen Rafferty, on myself. This is not true but I do understand that, possibly because I have written the novel in the first person, it is an easy enough assumption to make. GMcM: I most definitely have never attended an English boarding school although since reading all of the Harry Potter books I do sometimes get a yearning to hide myself away in an institution! I'm a good convent educated Irish Catholic girl. I was an exemplary student and would never dream of misbehaving (you do understand that I write fiction!). GMcM: Absolutely no one I know has ever been kidnapped but at times when I am lying awake at 4 in the morning waiting for one of my teenagers to come home that thought does occur to me. Then I dismiss it as I'm not rich enough for anyone to bother.

GMcM:I flew a lot in small aircraft when I lived in Papua New Guinea with a wonderful guy called Johnny Wilde whose family were in the process of starting up an airline. Johnny had a sea plane and we flew over turquoise reefs from Morseby to Milne Bay before landing in shallow waters, disembarking and wading through the water till we got to the nearest coconut plantation.

Editorial Note: Flying small aircraft around Papua New Guinea is officially the coolest former occupation of any writer ever interviewed.

GMcM:Later on I flew with him to the Highlands, densely forested and isolated areas, where access was only possible by small aircraft. It was wonderfully exotic but also dangerous as hell as the runways were so short there was always a possibility of not getting enough lift and crash landing in the bush. The possibility of rescue was as remote as the terrain.

GMcM: I don't lie to the cops. I am one of those awfully honest people who, if I try to tell a lie it's written all over my face. I don't understand people who lie to get through. It's so complicated.

GMcM: I don't make a habit of hiding in graveyards either but I honestly do like them. I just came across a great one in the Wicklow Hills up by Calary Bog. It fascinates me to read epitaphs and work out how old people were when they died. In one of the graves there was a father and son. The father was fifty when his son was born but the boy died, for some unwritten reason, when he was only fifteen years old. The father died shortly afterwards. There is no mention of a mother. I imagine that Dad wandering around the hillsides of Wicklow, lost and abandoned, crying out for his boy to come back, cursing the God behind the rain clouds that gather on the Sugarloaf, splashing and flaying about in the dank dark peat-water puddles of the lonely bog. He died, surely, of a broken heart. I just can't help making these people come alive in my head.

GMcM: I think what you are really asking is if Helen is based on me. The answer is no but then again there could be a bit of ‘yes' in it. I am not Helen, I have not done the things that she has done, I don't have the same family circumstances, I didn't have the same educational experience, but I do identify with Helen in some ways. To me, Helen's journey explores issues that are universal; the influence of your parents on the choices you make in adult life; trying to conform to a particular image that you think is expected of you in society; living with a mask on; allowing the pursuit of wealth to obsess your life, betrayal by your loved ones. All of these things happen to real people on a regular basis so while I am not Helen, I can identify with her journey.

CM: What are the central themes of the novel?

GMcM: To me the novel is essentially about identity, truth and betrayal. How much is an individual's perception of themselves dictated by the given ‘place' they get in society. What if someone tampers with that ‘place'? Will your personality change or are you fundamentally the same person? In Helen's case her identity has been built on lies and, to some extent, she has colluded with this.

GMcM: I have used the thriller genre only as means to explore these issues.

CM: A visit to your site revealed that the summer-house is an actual place. Please provide details on Cillindara.

GMcM: Yes, the summerhouse is an actual building in Wicklow. To me it is a truly wonderful piece of architecture and has a fantastically majestic presence. It used to be a restaurant and could get hired out for weddings after which the guests would skinny dip in the river below. It is a building with a beautifully bohemian past but sadly is no longer accessible to the public.

GMcM: Cillindara, on the other hand, is an entirely fictional place based on an amalgamation of a number of different country houses that I have stayed in/visited. Think St Columb's Rectory (the painter Derek Hill's house in Donegal), Kindelstown in Wicklow, Tinakilly House in Rathnew, Killmacurragh near Rathdrum. The inspiration for the oak forest came from Marble Hill House in Donegal.

GMcM: The name Cillindara is made up out of two of my children's names; Keelin and Darragh.

CM: Is there anything that you had not realized that you had put into the novel until it was completed, published, and put out there for everyone to see?

GMcM: No, not specifically but what I did not realize was how different the novel would be for everyone. People who have read the novel tend to personalize it in some ways that I had not expected. Everybody thinks it's either about them or that I have borrowed some part of their life history and put it in the novel.

CM: The way that The Same Cloth mixes present tension with flashbacks that unearth forgotten memory calls to mind Julie Parsons, one of the seven best Irish crime novelists. Is she an influence on your style? Or is it just that you both feature characters who live in the Dun Laoghaire area?

GMcM: No, I can't say that she is. I was brought up and have lived a large part of my life in Dun Laoghaire so it is natural to write about the familiar.

CM: OK then, who are your influences? Whose writing do you admire? Why? What elements make a good story?

GMcM: My reading choices are rather random and have no particular pattern. I honestly don't know who I am influenced by and don't think my writing is similar to anyone else that I know. I am not saying that in any sense of arrogance it's just that I actually do not have a great sense of objectivity about my own work. I do admire a lot of other writers (stayed up till 3am finishing The Secret Scripture …totally noble use of prose) but I am not at all sure whether they influence my writing. I mean I cannot write like Sebastian Barry nor do I aspire to. I write like me.

CM: In terms of reading choices, mostly I like sad stories where the human or another spirit prevails. Think Skellig (David Almond), I am David (Anne Holm); Dirt Music (Tim Winton); Cold Mountain (Charles Frazier); True History of the Kelly Gang (Peter Carey); The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy).

GMcM: I don't analyse what elements make up a good story. I just make up a story and tell it.

CM: What was your first half-decent short story about?

CM: Has anyone we book fans would know also gone through the program?

GMcM: Breda Wall-Ryan (short stories), Gina Eddisson (poetry), Eithne McGuinness (playright), Kevin Keily, Clare Kilroy.

CM: List seven important ways your writing has improved in the program.

GMcM: What? There's the seven again. Is this a Maths test? We are talking creative here.

GMcM: Getting accepted onto the Masters made me believe that I could be a writer; starting the course and reading everyone else's work made me believe that I couldn't be a writer; having my work critiqued and becoming conscious of how I could improve my writing made me believe that I could try to be a writer. That's what I am doing now; trying. I am not sure that I will ever be 100% happy with anything that I write. When I look back over stuff that I wrote six months ago I want to go back in and change it. If I ever reach perfection it will probably be time for me to move on to something else.

CM: Describe your writing process.

GMcM: Get up, have coffee, think about writing, walk the dog, make a phone call, think about writing, send an email, have another coffee, wonder why I gave up smoking because if I didn't I wouldn't be having this chocolate biscuit right now, take a phone call, check ever decreasing bank balance online, think about writing, think about getting a job, a real job, one with a pay packet at the end of every week, one with money that you can spend on all those ‘things', read over the stuff I wrote yesterday. Curse, correct and change. Write, hesitantly at first, revising everything and being generally dissatisfied about how it is all coming out, hate this word and that one, think of alternatives, come up with blanks, leave it till later, time is running on. Write, quicker now, surer footed. Write, gradually getting into a rhythm, the phone rings but I won't answer because where I am now is where I want to be; writing, words flowing effortlessly off the page, everything is making sense now, see that plot line from yesterday? here's where it fits, see I was right all along, I am a writer, I can do this, did you see that last paragraph?, the words just swim into each other, hell no, they just glide, glide like softened Irish butter on your farmer's market country bread. Write some more, see? now the words are beginning to make music in my head, this is brilliant, I am sublime, write, write, write.

GMcM: Next day; Get up, have coffee, read over what I wrote yesterday…did I mention the institution?

CM: OK! So you have learned well how to tell a story. Why did you decide to tell Helen Rafferty's story? What was the seed or inspiration?

GMcM: No, I don't think you do learn how to tell stories, you are either a story teller or you're not. Writing is a skill that can be learned, a craft that can be honed, but telling a good story is innate. You either have it or you don't. I don't know why I told Helen's story.

GMcM: It just came to me. I am lucky enough to have had a lot of different and interesting experiences in my life and it seems natural to me to want to tell stories. There was no particular seed of inspiration. I just started the novel and it took on a life of its own after that. There was no set plot, I knew the beginning and the end (more or less) but I didn't know how I was going to fill in the space in-between. It just happened.

CM: What are you working on now?

GMcM: I am working on a short story inspired by the time I lived in Australia and travelled from Darwin to Alice Springs in a Mini on my own. I love the total aloneness in the landscape of the Northern Territory and I have tried to use this as a means to explain the isolation of the main character. Again, this story is about a journey, albeit a shorter one than in The Same Cloth.

CM: The Same Cloth was published by Robert Hale, the same house as KT McCaffrey. (Do they publish only people with Mc in their names? That'd be weird. Like Johnny Carson who only married women named Joanne.) A little on your road to print, please….

GMcM: Actually it was terribly difficult road. My first stop was to get an agent. Most agents I approached were not interested in a non published author so that was a bit of a Catch 22. A lovely older man Bob Tanner, agreed to be my agent but unfortunately he died before I had signed the publishing deal with Hale. Hale only publishes in hardback and in retrospect I am not sure if this was the write format for me. We shall see…

CM: Are you a fan of the TV show 24? What are you enjoying/appreciating on the telly?

GMcM: Yes, I did like 24 when it first came out but I got tired of the repetition of the same format. Good things work once but a lot of series producers/directors don't seem to understand that. Think Lost and Prison Break, the latter of which is in eminent danger of suffering from the same ‘too many series' malady.

GMcM: I try to be selective about what I watch but that doesn't always work. The Devil's Whore was engrossing especially as I don't know a lot about the English civil war. Basically any drama will do but I find myself, mostly, being able to predict the plot. In the case of very bad drama, I can sometimes predict the actual lines. Now, I don't know what that says about me!

CM: In cinemas/DVD?

GMcM: A Film with Me in It. Classically Irish, understated, wonderful black humour. Dylan Moran is the funniest man on earth. Buffalo Soldiers. Let's face it; a little Joaquin goes a long way!

CM: On your stereo? Some recommendations/plugs, please….

GMcM: The other day I get a lovely surprise when Dublin City FM played some decent Bluegrass. Mostly I switch over to my Maria Callas CD and turn it up to full volume (it has a funny effect when you are stopped at traffic lights blasting out Carmen through an open window). When I am at home I wind down with Melanie O'Reilly, a great Jazz singer, who has a new album out called Dust and Blood. My children are forcing a bit or retro on me and I find myself bursting into dance to the tunes of The Doors and Led Zeppelin. I have overplayed Amy and can't listen to her anymore. More recently I have got into Sia since I saw her on Jools Holland doing ‘Walk away from me' in the luminous gear….magical!

CM: Have we read any of the same shtuff? (Critical Mick Full alphabetic index) Was my review way off about them?

GMcM: We have virtually nothing in common when it comes to reading material. The only one that I saw on the link where we crossed paths was The Master. I think your analysis was correct in that there was no story line. I got so bored with this that I didn't even finish it. Works of literary genius don't really interest me unless there is a great narrative to go with them.

CM: What seven things are on your nightstand? (books, I mean, but other items if you wanna....)

GMcM: The Duchess, Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture, The White Tiger, John Boyne's Mutiny on the Bounty, Redemption Falls (just started this,) Love poems in Irish (Filiocht ghra na Gaelige), some angel cards- and a list of things I have to do yesterday.

CM: Yikes! I won't delay you further. Many thanks, Geraldine!

Visit www.thesamecloth.com to view the image of the summer-house featured in Geraldine McMenamin's debut novel and avoid any more of Mick's references to the number seven.

Yo! This interview transcript and all content on the DFA Guide site are copyright 2008 Mick Halpin. All links to other sites and documents are copyright to whatever source wrote something cool enough for Mick to give it a referral. Try to claim them as your own work and bad karma will catch up with you, baby. Believe it.

Irate, huh? Managed to piss off another one? Direct your hatemail to mick @ mickhalpin dot com.

This Page Was Last Updated On 31 December, 2008.