Making sense of what is seen
Publishing a novel in these still relatively unsettled times must be difficult but fortunately, there are many that are perfect to lighten our mood. The sequel to Anne Devine: Ready for Her Close-Up, which was published last year, is out and author Colm O’Regan is agreeing that writing Ann Devine: Handle With Care was as much fun as I expected. The second instalment of the Devine family sees Ann slap bang in the middle of family and community drama. There’s an extra family member at home, her mother has moved in, her youngest child wants to be a TD and the community is in uproar at the thought of its post office closing. Ann wants to do her bit to save her village, but she’ll find that much more is going to cross her path.
“There are moments when I’m writing humour and there’s dialogue and it really sings,” says Colm. “It was a bit harder,” he says of writing novel number two. “I think it was always going to be that ‘difficult second album’ and also because I’ve written one novel now, I’m starting getting notions a bit like the book in the book club.”
He laughs. “There are times when it’s fun to write what somebody says and not even predict how a thing is going to go. You find the characters taking on automony in your head and that’s fun. Every so often characters do things that I hadn’t planned for them to do but now it makes sense, that’s what they would do.
“There’s a fun start bit where everybody’s delighted you’re writing the book and you’re getting going, and there’s a nice bit towards the end where you’ve got the shape and then you’re having fun making stuff better. And then in the middle is – I’m sure it’s like any project – you feel ‘not only is this book no good but I’m also a terrible human being,’ that self criticism. I’m kind of harsh on myself.”
Colm writes fiction, he says, to help him ‘make sense of Ireland as it evolves and changes and its complexities’ and indeed, this second look at Ann and her family concerns, in part, the 2018 referendum and the Papal visit.
“There are years in a life of a country where something is either ‘before’ that year or ‘after’ that year and I thought that summer of 2018, bookended by the referendum in May and the Pope’s arrival in August worked. Iit was a handy beginning and end and representing every side of Ireland. I went to the Phoenix Park and thought, ‘Who here voted yes? Who among the no campaign would dislike the Pope?’”
One of my favourite bits of Handle With Care is Ann’s mother Margaret’s great desire to attend the Papal mass in Phoenix Park. In fact, Margaret, though mentioned in the first book, is one of this book’s core elements.
“It’s always a source of fascination for me how children of every age see their parents only in the frame of reference of while the child has been alive,” says Colm. “I love the idea of Ann, Ann at age 59 or 60, hiding from her mother the extent of whether she goes to mass or not. Margaret wants to go and see the Pope because it didn’t happen last time. There’s lots of things going on that explain why she didn’t get to see the Pope in 1979 and that echoing back to 2018. We latch onto a thing in the past and then it takes on a bigger significance.”
This reads like it was pure enjoyment to write. The comedy is gentle but present, and never nasty, something Colm is keen to ensure.
“I just don’t want anyone bullied in the novel or bullied as a result. If you coin some shorthand thing about a person or a group and it’s on the money, it’s so hilarious but it’s hurtful then I’m not going to spend ages justifying that for the sake of art. There’s a place for writing stuff that’s sharp or can be very cutting but you have to be very good at it, and if you’re not good at it and try it, then you might hurt somebody.
“Humour is supposed to be a weapon to punch upwards. And if you’re punching downwards, you’re punching and you’re being funny and for me, they don’t go together.”
So can fans expect to see a third outing for Ann?
“I’d love to continue on in some shape or form,” says Colm. “I have arcs in my mind for all of them and again, things I want to represent in a book that I feel it requires the long form. If it doesn’t happen in a book, I’ll try it in some other format. I couldn’t end the book in a way that drew a line under everything because that’s not how life works. But if I ever write a whodunit, I probably should solve the crime at the end though to be on the safe side,” he laughs.
“I find the long form a nice way that suits how my brain works to try and tease out modern life. I’m in this business, it’s my job but it’s also part of my making sense of what I see.”
Ann Devine: Handle With Care by Colm O’Regan (Transworld Ireland) is available now