Best-selling author Cathy Kelly chats to Niamh O’Reilly about the new love in her life and why she hates the label ‘chick-lit’.

Cathy Kelly sounds as though she’s never been happier. She’s just published her twenty second book and, almost two years after her split from husband John Sheehan, she has found a new love.

“I’ve so much optimism,” she says. “I’m now seeing somebody else, it’s just completely lovely, it’s wonderful and I really didn’t think that was going to happen.”

Cathy has kept herself busy in the last two years, writing her novel The Wedding Party and taking on new challenges like Dancing with the Stars earlier this year, but she has kept the idea of romance on the back burner. Until now. Much like a character in her popular books, it was only when she wasn’t focusing on looking for a relationship that one found her.

“It’s like when you’re a teenager and you’re desperately mad to get a boyfriend, the vibes of desperation would go off you in waves,” she laughs. “I think that when you’re not expecting anything to happen, it happens and you’re so much more yourself as you get older too.”

Cathy certainly seems to be very at ease with herself and her life in general. “Age. I’m telling you, it’s age,” she insists lightly. “You get to 55 and you think ‘ah sure we’re all just trying to get along’.” However, her outwardly happy, chatty and confident persona is not always as rock solid as it appears.

“I suffered from anxiety and depression my whole life and people look at me and think ‘oh well she’s very happy and merry’ and I am. I’m all those things, but I also have dark holes that I can fall into.”

BEHIND THE MASK

In many ways, Cathy’s books are a mirror of her life and the life of many women who put on a brave face to mask what’s going on underneath their busy, demanding, often complicated lives which they hide from the world. “Everything looks lovely and fine on the surface, but it isn’t. It’s the concept I’ve always written about and it’s in many of our lives. I think women are so good at putting on a game face and thinking well people will say I’m moaning or complaining if I speak out.” These themes are explored in her new book

The Wedding Party which centres on the lives of the four beautiful Robicheaux sisters, Indy, Eden, Savannah and Rory.

“They are all very different and all have a different vision of their childhood. ­ Their parents shock them by telling them they are not just dating but getting re-married, so it’s about what do you do when your parents decide to get back together? Some of the sisters think this is a good thing and some are going through trauma in their own lives and are not as keen.”

Usurpingly, secrets are at the heart of Cathy’s book. “I love secrets!” she gushes-sentence, “the secrets are pinging out all over the place.” ­ e book delves into some tough subject matters, one of which is the threatening abuse suffered by Eden, an up-and-coming politician.

“I’m really interested in the whole area of women in politics. ­ They often get savaged which is very frightening when you think about it; women politicians are so brave, I think it’s a very feminist point to make.”

Cathy is a fi rm supporter of fellowwomen and can add herself to the cohort of those who used the #MeToo movement to share their truth, after bravely speaking out in 2017 about being a survivor of a past sexual assault. “I always think no-one’s interested in what I have to say, but I think so many of us are vulnerable on so many levels and we’re not aware of it and it goes on. ­ The #MeToo movement has been incredibly empowering for any of us who went through anything like that, because for years we just hid it in shame,” she recalls.

“It was like it was my fault. I didn’t know the right thing to do, when actually you are predated upon by someone else.”

MOTHERHOOD

Despite it all, Cathy’s not just survived, but has flourished and is now truly comfortable in her own skin. “It’s taken a long time,” she emphasises, “and lots of bashes along the way, but the thing is for so long we’re all trying to appear in a particular way or fit into a particular group and then suddenly you realise, it doesn’t really matter.”

Motherhood has been a huge part of Cathy’s transformative journey to where she is today and she couldn’t be prouder of her twin boys who are almost 19, whom she describes as “two beautiful human beings, who are so kind and so aware of the world”.

“Parenting does this to you, I would never have stood up for myself certainly in the early days of my career in journalism and in my assault, but having children, I became something different. I wouldn’t necessarily fight for me, but I would for my boys.”

Cathy is undoubtedly one our most successful writers and once knocked Dan Brown and J.K Rowling off the top spot in the UK, which was “only for a week” she brushes off lightly, yet her name is often not uttered in the same way in which some of her male counterparts might be.

­The reason? Could it be down to the reductive term ‘chick-lit’ which has become the bane of most female authors’ lives since it was coined in the ‘90s? ­ The sexist moniker, which has become less popular now, was used to undermine the value of writing about relatable, real world female stories which often connected with the reader in a very powerful way.

“I haven’t been okay with it for about 20 years,” Cathy declares. “When I stated writing, everything was referred to as ‘chick-lit’ and it didn’t matter if it was written by a woman and she could have been committing suicide, if there was a bottle of chardonnay on the premises it was chick-lit.”

Cathy emerged around the same time as other Irish female publishing powerhouses like Marian Keyes and Shelia O’Flanagan and remembers that often “we were just so delighted to be published that we didn’t care what we were called, but then we started to think, ‘hang on here we are writing about serious things’”.

“It’s disguised as intellectual snobbery, but it’s really misogynist snobbery, saying if it’s written by a woman and it’s popular, it’s less valuable than a man writing about the same thing. It drives me nuts.”

However, these days Cathy’s less perturbed about the label than she has been. “When people categorise me as that now, I just think that’s their limitation rather than mine and if you want to put me in that box to feel better about yourself, well off you go.”

Today, Cathy is sanguine about life and confident about where she’s heading.

“People will think what they will think,” she muses. “You take care of the people you love; you try to live your life the best way you can. I do my best to be kind to people and be happy.”

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