Relentlessly Purple blog tour stop

Today Astral Travel lands on Relentlessly Purple, where blogger Ember says she really enjoyed reading a 'different kind of mystery book'. I find this gratifying, as although Astral Travel is metafictive and deals with some pretty hefty issues, it is after all basically a mystery. The fundamental mystery is narrator Jo's complicated father whose Irish background is shrouded in silence, and who is two very different men: a talkative charmer in the outside world and in her mother's tales about their early life together, but throughout Jo's childhood broody and bad-tempered in the home. And there are other mysteries: why does Jo's mother have such different memories from Jo's of their life during Jo's childhood? And why did the family move about so often in a way that isn't fully explained? The novel consists of Jo's quest to understand these things, and her discovery of the truth behind it all.

B for Book Review blog tour stop

Today on its Random Things blog tour, Astral Travel whizzes into B for Book Review, where you can read an extract from the beginning of the novel. This beginning is called 'Before and After', and is a kind of prologue in two sections, the first of which takes place after the major events of the novel, the second taking us right back to a time before it all started, to the narrator's childhood and the beginning of a mysterious change in her father which is to propel the whole novel. The extract on B for Book Review takes us from the very start to partway through this second section.

Booklymatters blog tour stop

The RandomThings book tour for Astral Travel kicks off today at Booklymatters with a review which begins:

This brilliant book is about the stories we tell ourselves, how we learn to handle the realities we cannot escape from, and exactly how much of our truest selves we are willing to expose or share in search of essential connection and resolution. 

The review then goes on to consider the 'stories within stories' aspect of the book - the way that stories can seem one way, but when you delve deeper, as m protagonist Jo does, you can find they have entirely different meanings and even be different stories altogether. You can read the whole review here.

Astral Travel Book Tour

Next week Astral Travel is indeed travelling - to some great blogs and Instagram accounts. Here's the schedule beginning Monday. There'll be reviews, an extract, and a giveaway if you're interested in trying for a free copy.

21st June: Bookly Matters (Instagram) @booklymatters

22nd June: B for Bookreview @BookreviewsB

23rd June: Relentlessly Purple @Lentlesslypurpl

24th June: Random things through My Letterbox @annecater

25th June: Emmaz Book Blog @corkyyorky

 

Miss Emily by Nuala O'Connor. Blog tour Stop #2

Today I am delighted to be hosting the second stop on the virtual tour for Miss Emily, the latest riveting and beautifully written novel by Nuala O'Connor (who also writes as Nuala Ní Chonchúir).

Published this month by Penguin USA, Penguin Canada and UK Sandstone Press, it is a story of the friendship between the nineteenth-century American poet Emily Dickinson and a fictional Irish maid. It begins as the Dickinson family of Amherst, Massachusetts bemoan the loss of their previous maid, which has meant that Emily and her sister Vinnie have had to take on the household chores, occasioning burnt potatoes at the table and the loss of Emily's jealously guarded writing time. Meanwhile the feisty seventeen-year-old Ada Concannon, having been demoted as a maid in an Irish baronet's house for turning up at work bedraggled after swimming in the Liffey, decides there's more to life than this and sets sail to join her aunt and uncle and their family in Amherst, soon to fill the gap at the Homestead, the Dickinson household, and thus become the poet's saviour. Told in the voices of the two women, in alternating chapters throughout the book, the novel charts the growing friendship between the down-to-earth but sharp-minded Ada and the reclusive older Emily, sparked in the beginning through their shared love of baking, and culminating in a drama in which Ada's reputation is violated, and Emily must stand up for her against her beloved family.

As always with a book by Nuala, the mesmeric prose draws you straight into the psyches and emotions of the characters with a vivid and sensuous conjuring of atmosphere and scene. As always, there is both a lushness and a toughness, polarised here in the different linguistic registers of the two women, which are acutely handled.

Here's Emily looking around in the garden:

...everything is floral and abundant, while the apple maggots and cabbageworm do their best to undo it all. I sit under a pine, listening to the sounds of the earth, the turn of the beetle and the bone-song of the crickets;

and here's Ada cheerfully taking her to task:

'Now, Miss Emily,' Ada says, 'are you going to sit there like a clump of muck, or are you going to do something useful?'

The descriptions of baking are mouthwatering, there are acute insights into poet Emily's psychology and creative process, Ada's eventual trial is searing, and the drama that finally overtakes the two women is nail-biting.

It's a novel about female friendship across the generations and classes, about two women fighting the different class restrictions of their gender (Emily can write while Ada must toil; Ada can go to the circus while Emily can do nothing so unseemly), forging in the process an unlikely friendship. It's quite simply a wonderful and immersive read.

You don't at all need to know Emily Dickinson's poetry or anything of her life to fully enjoy this novel. Satisfyingly for those who do, though, Nuala has clearly researched her in depth, and the novel dispels a few myths. In an interesting article on the Huffington Post, Who is Emily Dickinson? Nuala talks about those myths and the real Emily, shown in this novel to be more characterful and active than she is often portrayed.

For anyone in Dublin tomorrow night, the book will be launched at the Gutter bookshop, Cow's Lane, Tel. (00353) 1 6799206, info@gutterbookshop.com .

Read the previous tour stop, at Shauna Gilligan's blog, where Nuala is interviewed about the book, here. You can follow the rest of the tour, and discover lots more details about the book and Nuala's work from her blog, Women Rule Writer.

Nuala O'Connor was born in Dublin, Ireland, she lives in East Galway. Already well-known under the name Nuala Ní Chonchúir, she has published four short story collections, the most recent Mother America appeared from New Island in 2012. Her third poetry collection The Juno Charm was published by Salmon Poetry in 2011 and Nuala’s critically acclaimed second novel The Closet of Savage Mementos appeared April 2014, also from New Island; it was shortlisted for the Kerry Irish Novel of the Year Award 2015. In summer 2015, Penguin USA, Penguin Canada and Sandstone (UK) publish Nuala’s third novel, Miss Emily, about the poet Emily Dickinson and her Irish maid. www.nualanoconnor.com

An interview with Nuala Ní Chonchúir about her new collection of short stories

Today this blog is honoured by a visit from the wonderful writer Nuala Ní Chonchúir, who's on a tour to promote her latest book, Mother America (New Island). This stunning collection of short stories deals chiefly though not exclusively with aspects of motherhood - the experience of it, its effects and consequences - taking in not only the viewpoints and voices of mothers but of men and children too. There's also an achingly moving reworking of the Mary Magdelene story, and a recurring scenario of betrayal in which an affair occurs between a woman's husband and her sister, this last vividly conveyed in a second-person portrayal of the pain of the artist Frieda Kahlo - a theme of painting and drawing works its way through the collection, too. There's a cosmopolitan feel, with stories set in America, Paris and Rome, yet the spirit of Ireland hovers over it all, as in the story in which an Irish mother, brought to Brooklyn by her son and then abandoned by her there, sits in a cafe with the letter he's sent her but which she is unable to read. In another story, the very same cafe plays host to a different character, and similar connections trace their way across several of the stories. Short-story writer, novelist and poet, Nuala seems a complete mistress of all three forms. I find her work breathtaking in its insight and command of language - her touch is light, yet her sentences, both poetic yet muscular, burn themselves on your brain, and her vision is both warmly human yet searing. This book had me enthralled, at times in tears, now and then laughing out loud with delight at the connections, and I was eager to talk to Nuala about it.

 

EB: Nuala, there's a strong theme of exile running through the book, centred on the mother figure. So many of the mothers are Irish, and I wonder if you are making a link between a mother's relationship with her children, and the people of Ireland with their homeland?

NNC: Ireland is personified as a woman – Róisín Dubh, meaning Dark Rosaleen – in song and myth. We also have the mother goddess Danu, and Ériu who gave her name to the country, so the symbol and importance of woman/mother is a strong one in Ireland.

There is also the old cliché about the Irish mother and her sons – she loves her sons and they can do no wrong, but she lambasts her daughters. There’s the ring of truth in that of course. I’m a mother (of two boys and one girl) and I’m a daughter, and that influences what I write about. Ireland is also a country of emigrants and, lately, immigrants. Historically, there is a good deal of sentimentality about Irish emigration (that continues to this day) and I am interested in that.

When it comes to writing stories, I have no agenda – I just write about whatever is interesting to me at that time. For the last three years that has been mothers, especially ones who are separated from their children, by force or by will.

EB: The connections between some of the stories are stunning and very moving, and it's a wonderful way of carrying your themes of exile and also redemption. Would you talk about that?

NNC: When I write stories, one after the other, inevitably there are linking themes, because my synapses are sparking off a few riffs (if that is not too mixed a metaphor!) over a period of time. I only realised, after a few stories, that I was writing about mothers. The fear and separation/exile motifs emerged later. Two of the stories are very deliberately linked: ‘Scullion’ sees a young maid become pregnant by her master. ‘My Name is William Clongallen’ sees the son of that union return to Ireland from America to seek out his mother.

I like links in short fiction collections but I also like diversity. Nam Le, Caitlin Horrocks, Sarah Hall and Anthony Doerr all do a great line in diversity in their collections, though there may be a linking tone or theme, of melancholy or loss or whatever, in their books.

As long as a book hangs together cohesively in some way, I see no absolute need for linked collections. I would be disturbed if it became the norm – it would smack of publishers attempting to make novels of short fiction collections, which I object to.

EB: You are brilliant at voice and point of view, and the contrasts in both once again promote your themes brilliantly. How do you do it? Was it a deliberate choice or instinctive here?

NNC: I am most comfortable writing in the first or second person, so that’s where I will usually begin. Third person is more difficult for me but some stories, like ‘Queen of Tattoo’ beg for that bit of distance.

It’s instinctive in the sense that I don’t plan anything when I write – I go from the gut and the thing either works or it doesn’t. Having a distinctive voice to work from always makes a story flow much easier for me, so I like when a voice whispers in my ear early on.

EB: In some ways this book reminded me of one of my favourite short story writers, the American Grace Paley, although you have your own distinct tone. It's not just in the melting-pot Brooklyn settings, the cleverness with voice and the concern with motherhood: there's always a sense of homeland underpinning everything, perhaps best summed up in the title story. How do you manage to conjure up these places (the stories set in Paris conjure up its atmosphere, beautifully, too)?

NNB: As an Irish person, I am pretty much obsessed with place. It may be to do with Colonialism and occupation, but we Irish are very regional, very place-addicted. Most of us want to own our bit of home.

But, as someone born in 1970, I am also very Europe orientated and I value Ireland’s connection to the European Union. So my fiction happily looks to Europe and America, while also keeping one foot firmly in the homeplace.

Travel has been the big boon of being a writer for me. I’ve always enjoyed travel and now I get to do it a lot. That fires me up as a writer; I love it. I am an ardent notebook keeper and, when I travel, even more so. I keep a journal, I take photos, and all that helps if I feel like setting a story in Paris, for example, where I have set many stories.

Thanks for having me by, Elizabeth. Next Monday my virtual tour takes me to writer Ethel Rohan’s blog in San Francisco. http://ethelrohan.com/blog/. I hope some of your readers will join me there.

Thanks so much, Nuala. I urge you all to buy the book - it's wonderful!

See my earlier interview with Nuala about her witty and moving novel, You.