Ciara Geraghty
Author Interview - Ciara Geraghty
Author I draw inspiration from: It has to be Edna O’Brien. This Irish writer is one is one I admire hugely. She was subject to loud and harsh criticism from her own people, her own country, when The Country Girls was first published, back in 1960. The book - denounced from the pulpit and burned in some churchyards - was the first of six of O’Brien’s books to be banned by the Irish Censorship Board. In spite of all this, O’Brien never faltered, she never stopped writing, she was an incredibly brave woman writer at a time when it was hard to be any of those things. She is someone who has paved the way for me and many other Irish women writers. In fact, she dug it, with her own bare hands. She is someone who told us how she did it and then gave us permission to do it too.
Author Interview - Ciara Geraghty
Favorite place to read a book: On the couch in my kitchen, when the evening sunshine pours across it. The problem is that the newest addition to our family - a puppy called Gary - is under the impression that it’s ‘his’ couch now so it’s not as roomy as it once was.
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with: Muriel Pritchett from ‘The Accidental Tourist’. Muriel would brighten up any room or elevator. Also, she could give me tips on how to train my unruly puppy!
Author Interview - Ciara Geraghty
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author: One day, in 2004, I was standing on the platform at a train station in Dublin. There was nothing extraordinary about this day, but as I stood there in the throng, I suddenly realised that I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. And I felt that was a bad thing, given that I was grown up. I was an insurance loss adjuster at the time. I had never planned to become one. It just happened. All of a sudden, as I stood on the platform in the throng, I realised I was in a rut. The realisation settled on me like a dark cloud and followed me around for months. My husband noticed. He said, ‘What ails you?’ I said, ‘I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.’ He said, ‘You’re already grown up.’ I said, ‘I know, it’s worrying.’
Then a man fell off a roof at a college and I was sent out to investigate the incident on behalf of the college’s insurance company. I got up on the roof, took some photographs, managed not to fall off and then had a conversation with the principal, a lovely man who, in the general course of conversation, told me all about their evening adult education programme and gave me a booklet with the details of the courses.
The creative writing class started on a Tuesday. It was raining. Dark and cold. I didn’t know anyone. I was hungry, having come straight from work. I’m not good when I’m hungry. I’m cranky when I’m hungry. I worried that I would make a fool out of myself. I hadn’t written anything other than cheques, and reports for work, and letters before the advent of e-mail. I can’t really say why I picked that course. I loved reading but who didn’t?
But from that very first creative writing class, I knew I wanted to be an author. And even though the work is always challenging, frustrating, time-consuming and stressful, when I write my two favourite words in the English language – ‘The’ and ‘End’ – the sense of achievement and – this sounds a bit twee but I’ll say it anyway – fulfilment, is enormous. I do something that I love. That I’m passionate about. It’s not always easy but it’s always interesting.
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook: I’m an old school senses person. I not only like to read books but I enjoy smelling and feeling them too. So, for me, it’s paperback every time. Paperbacks aren’t as heavy as hardbacks and they’re smaller, thus fitting into most handbags and even some pockets. I also don’t feel like I’m defacing a precious artefact if I dog-ear a paperback, get chocolate stains on a page or crack the spine. Paperbacks don’t have the lofty notions of themselves that hardbacks do. They’re just easier to be around.
The last book I read: ‘David Copperfield’ by Charles Dickens. Up to now, I hadn’t read any Dickens and, since he is often described as ‘the greatest novelist of the Victorian era’ I felt this was a little remiss of me. It took me a while to get through it - thousands of pages, hundreds of characters and the writing is TINY! - and my main feeling when I finally got to the end was one of relief. I’d made it out the other end! Also, a type of survivor’s guilt - shouldn’t I have enjoyed it more?
Author Interview - Ciara Geraghty
Pen & paper or computer: Computer. I type fast and with much pounding on the keys. The benefits are two-fold: (1) I get the words onto the page before my inner critic catches up with me and, (2) the pounding of my fingertips against the keys makes me feel productive. Like there’s a large sign over my head proclaiming ‘Woman At Work’.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with: Twelve-year old me yearned to be best friends with Anne Shirley from ‘Anne of Green Gables’. I fell in love with Anne as surely as if she were a living, breathing human being I sat beside at school. I was a small, scrawny, red-haired, freckly kid. Anne made it okay to be all of those things. Plus she was smart and fierce and sweet and gutsy. I imagined the pair of us, kindred spirits, tearing through Avonlea, in puff-sleeved dresses, leaving havoc and mayhem in our wake that would turn out fine in the end because we’d make everyone laugh about it and they would declare us adorable, even if they really didn’t want to. They just wouldn’t be able to help themselves.
Author Interview - Ciara Geraghty
If I wasn’t an author, I’d be a: A tetchy, wise-cracking waitress in a diner or a backing singer in a glam-rock band.
Favorite decade in fashion history: The swank and sass of the swinging sixties appeals to me - the short skirts, the tall boots, the drainpipe jeans, the bold patterns and the bright colours. The fashion equivalent of a call-to-arms for women who were sick of being hemmed in by the patriarchy.
Place I’d most like to travel: Given the year we’re having with Covid 19, I’d settle for anyplace at all right now, even a badly-pitched tent in a sodden, stony field in Connemara. But, if I could go anywhere, I’d go to New York City, see a show, take the subway, shout down a cab like they do in the movies, eat pancakes in a diner, marvel at the millions of different ways Americans cook their eggs. Being in New York city is like being stabbed in the chest with an adrenalin shot; it’s sensory overload, you might hyperventilate and feel dizzy but you will know for a fact that you are alive.
My signature drink: Well, it used to be anything with alcohol in it but, since I don’t drink anymore, I’m going to have to go with tea. And none of your fancy herbal teas. I’m talking regular black breakfast tea. And don’t even think about taking the caffeine out of that bad girl. The tea must be made in a teapot. With tealeaves. A strainer may be used if you must. The teapot must have a tea-cosy. A home-knit tea-cosy with a bobble on the top. Nothing says ‘I got your back’ like a freshly made pot of tea sporting a home-knit tea-cosy with a bobble on the top.
Favorite artist: I am a fan of Louise Bourgeois. One of my happiest memories is a trip with my daughter, Sadhbh, to London a few years ago. Sadhbh, an art-history student, insisted on starting every day with a trip to the Tate Modern. It was the one and only period in my life where I began my days thus and I highly recommend it. I returned to the Louise Bourgeois exhibition again and again. Her art appealed to me as a woman, a mother, a daughter. There is something rich and visual and tactile about her pieces; you come away feeling she has confided in you. I even love Maman - which is saying something since I’m terrified of spiders, ordinarily.
Number one on my bucket list: Being a smoker - despite also being a serial giver-upper of cigarettes - I am wary of bucket lists as people of my ilk often don’t last long enough to enjoy the fruits of such wish-lists. But let’s say I suddenly have a personality transplant and find myself saying - in a smug tone - ‘Oh no, thank you, I don’t smoke.’ Maybe then the production of a bucket list would be just the thing to occupy the long, lonely, endless hours without cigarettes….
Author Interview - Ciara Geraghty
