The Beauty of Irish Female Authors

I’ve never really sat down and considered the number of books I’ve read that have been written by an Irish female author before, but when coming to write this blog post in honour of St Patrick’s Day, it suddenly occurred to me that in my lifetime, I have actually consumed a lot of Irish fiction. So I thought it would be interesting to go through some of my favourite Irish female authors and discuss common themes in their work, their writing and their personalities to understand a little more about what Irish fiction can offer us as readers and consumers of the genre.

Sally Rooney Sally Rooney has been described as ‘the great millennial novelist’ and her book ‘Normal People’ took the world by storm. The New York Times stated that ‘Since the release of her 2017 debut, “Conversations With Friends,” and her Booker Prize-longlisted “Normal People” in 2018, Rooney, 30, has become the kind of best-selling, critically praised author whose popularity somehow eclipses the books themselves.’

Her writing, albeit not for everyone, allows the reader to have the freedom in creating characters in their mind and in my opinion, Rooney writes about modern day relationships and friendships in such a clear way that it’s like a lightbulb going off in your head. You’re immediately aware of the connections you have with the characters, reading in such a way that makes you think - ‘yes, exactly that!’

The NY Times also says that ‘For Rooney, the intimate and the ideological go hand in hand. That is, you can’t fully understand Felix and Alice’s relationship, or Eileen and Simon’s, without understanding their relative positions within the social order around them.’ - and yes, I feel exactly that.

Popular books by Sally Rooney:

• Conversations With Friends

• Normal People

• Beautiful World, Where Are You

Megan Nolan Nolan’s debut novel, Acts of Desperation, introduced the world to a love story like no other. Nolan’s honest and intimate way of writing made the story of a toxic relationship so powerful, it’s incredibly hard to forget this book once you’ve read it.

When asked by The Guardian journalist, Alex Clark, about the younger generation of Irish authors, Nolan replied that ‘she finds it confusing – the descriptions of a new wave of authors just feels, to her, like another year of Irish books being published. She adds that when Sally Rooney’s forthcoming novel was recently announced, a friend “very cruelly” texted her and asked if it made her worried she’d be asked about it more. But, she points out, although she admires both writers, “you’d struggle to meaningfully compare my novel to say, Sally Rooney’s or Naoise Dolan’s, for instance, if you go beyond the basic stuff of young Irish woman and relationships; I don’t think I share a style with either of them.”’

I’m so excited for what else Nolan has up her sleeve as I really found that her exploration of being young and lonely was one I not only could relate to but was so unlike anything I’ve read before - I felt seen and I really enjoyed her humour surrounding quite deep and dark topics.

Acts of Desperation was Megan Nolan’s first novel.

Naoise Dolan When Dolan’s debut, Exciting Time, hit the shelves, it was THE book everyone was buying, reading and talking about. Personally, I think it was the witty humour and direct explanations of feelings and situations that got everyone hooked. Again, the novel centres around a young, alienated woman who is working in Hong Kong as a teacher and finds herself stuck in a love triangle.

When speaking to the Irish Times, Dolan spoke about the ways she writes; ‘The way I write I think is informed by the fact I was very much into reading plays as a teenager, so it’s [the novel] focused on imagining a couple of talking heads in a room; it was very centred on those set pieces around the characters.’ And I completely agree. It’s the classic example of ‘nothing major happens in the book but the characters and their internal monologues are second to none’.

Exciting Times was Naoise Dolan’s first novel.

Marian Keyes Adored by readers for her chatty writing style and satisfying stories, she has been for many years dubbed as the queen of ‘chick lit’. With her 15th novel, Again, Rachel being published this year, it is no surprise why Keyes is considered to be one of the biggest writers of our generation.

Keyes has sold over 35 million copies of her novels and her books have been translated into 33 different languages which just proves that her loveable characters and depiction/exploration of themes such as alcoholism, depression, addiction, cancer, bereavement, and domestic violence have been key to her 20 year success.

In speaking with Lisa Allardice from The Guardian, ‘Keyes is delighted at the success of fellow Irish novelist Sally Rooney. “The utter thrill that there were people queueing outside bookshops around the world for the third novel from a young, female, Marxist, feminist Irish writer. Who would have thought?” Above all, she is thrilled at the changes that made her ascendency possible: “A writer who came from this repressive fucking country where women were not allowed to have opinions, where sticking your head above the parapet brought this incredible weight of judgment down on top of you,” she says. “It makes me proud of Ireland.” She rattles off a list of names – Naoise Dolan, Louise O’Neill, Nicole Flattery, Jan Carson, Lucy Caldwell – who have gained acclaim in Rooney’s wake. “She has changed the landscape for young Irish women writers.”’

Popular books by Marian Keyes:

• Rachel’s Holiday

• Grown Ups

• Watermelon

Cecelia Ahern Ahern wrote her first novel at just 21 years old. Her debut novel, believe it or not, was actually the bestselling novel and film PS I Love You which was published back in January 2004. To date, Cecelia’s books have sold 25 million copies internationally, are published in over 40 countries, in 30 languages which is testament to how Ahern builds characters and executes their emotional journeys excellently.

If you’ve ever read one of Ahern’s books you will know that she creates easy-to-read stories that centre around brilliantly real characters. Ahern states that ‘she is drawn to writing about loss, to characters that have fallen and who feel powerless in their lives. She is fascinated and inspired by the human spirit, by the fact that no matter how hopeless we feel and how dark life can be, we do have the courage, strength and bravery to push through our challenging moments. We are the greatest warriors in our own stories. She likes to catch her characters as they fall, and bring them from low to high. Her characters push through and as a result evolve, become stronger and better equipped for the next challenge that life brings. She mixes dark with light, sadness with humour, always keeping a balance, and always bringing the story to a place of hope.’

Popular books by Cecelia Ahern:

• PS I Love You

• Lyrebird

• Freckles

Eimear McBride When Eimear McBride’s debut novel, A Girl is A Half-Formed Thing, arrived on the scene with its unconventional prose, it became a talking point within the literary world. It even went on to win the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2014 and had fellow Irish author, Anne Enright, naming McBride as a ‘genius’.

McBride’s novels have this way of capturing what is real and spinning it to become fiction. She also excellently lets the reader know exactly what the protagonist is thinking by writing in such a way that we feel like we’re reading their internal dialogue. We’re going behind the scenes as such to a normal story to understand the motives and the raw feelings behind the characters. It’s a superb but odd way of writing but one that captures this idea of ‘modernism’ brilliantly.

As McBride puts it to TheJournal.ie, ‘we don’t tell our story every time we have a thought or a memory, we don’t go through the whole thing right from the start again and work out why we feel this way about something – we go in and out and we stop thinking about things, or we distract ourselves from things’.

Popular books by Eimear McBride:

• A Girl is A Half-Formed Thing

• The Lesser Bohemians

• Strange Hotel
  

So it’s evident from the above that the reason books written by Irish female authors are so popular is because they are ‘real’. Yes, I agree to an extent that we read to forget or to escape from the horrors going on in real life, but sometimes by reading a book where you feel fully seen, or reading a sentence that you can fully relate to can make you feel like you’re not alone. There have been multiple times when I’ve been reading a Sally Rooney book and thought to myself, ‘oh god, I remember when I felt that way’ and it took me back to a time when I felt like what her characters were feeling like. Similarly, with Marian Keyes books or with Megan Nolan’s Acts of Desperations there were snippets from those books that made me feel less crazy for feeling or reacting to something the way I did because right there on the page in front of me is a character acting the exact same way. I really love Irish fiction for all those reasons, but I especially love the trends that Irish female authors are displaying in their books which is all about establishing women as three-dimensional beings who feel so many more emotions than just being ‘motherly’, ‘caring’ or ‘placid’. And I think it’s truly excellent.