Twenty-four years have passed between the publication of my first novel, Acts of Subversion, and my second novel, A Shadow in the Yard. In the intervening period I’ve been caught up in the maelstrom of the political world of Dáil Eireann. When I reached retirement age in 2011 I opted not to become an elderly TD with a free travel pass. I closed the door of my office for the last time and said goodbye to Leinster House.
It was a leap into the dark. As it turned out it was the beginning of a new life. After a long parliamentary career, it took me a while to get used to the novelty of having lots of time and the freedom to choose how I spent it. I was at liberty to write without distraction, to sit in front of a computer screen for as long as I wanted.
After years of exile, I had finally come home.
All the same, I wasn’t sure if I’d be capable of writing another novel so I went back to college to find out. The year I spent in TCD studying for an MPhil in Creative Writing in the Oscar Wilde Centre did the trick. The experience opened my mind and nourished my soul. I found the confidence to begin writing A Shadow in the Yard. The novel sprang from a simple image: a young mother is murdered and her body is left in a river. That was all I had to go on and yet I knew, instinctively, that the novel would cover the events leading to her death and and the period after it. As it turned out the novel covers a 30-year timeframe between 1969 and 1999: a time of dramatic change in Irish society played out against the brutality and killings of the Northern Troubles.
Many novels have been written about the Troubles already so I knew that I was in danger of covering old ground and yet I persisted. In published fiction, the lives of warring combatants have been well explored while those of their victims – who were often innocent bystanders – are left unremembered except by family and friends. The peace agreement in Northern Ireland depends on a certain collective amnesia about the past and that makes me uncomfortable. In his poem, The Whole Mosaic, the Northern poet John Hewitt writes that history is selective. Unless we include the stories of "the child on an errand run over by the army truck, the young woman strayed into the line of fire" the poet argues that we cannot have a full understanding of any conflict.
I wanted to tell the story of a young woman called Rosaleen McAvady, but I also wanted to write about the historical background to her life and the extraordinary changes that Irish domestic life has undergone.
First and foremost, I knew, fiction is about people and not about politics. All the same I could not ignore the context within which the characters in the novel developed. I was determined not to let the context overwhelm the characters. Finding the balance was the challenge – as it is for many writers before me. The intensely political writer Nadine Gordimer confirmed the centrality of character when she said, “The novel is what happens when the riot is over: it’s what happens when people go home.”
When people go home ... I like that phrase. I like the freedom it gives me, as a writer, to explore domestic life, marriage, the changing nature of Irish society. There are two parts to A Shadow in the Yard. The first part is Rosaleen’s story of her life in 1969, and the relationships she enjoys with her children, her husband, her best friend Laura. The constraints she experiences are diametrically opposed to those known to her daughter Aoife whose adult life is the subject of the second part of the novel.
The contrast in the lives of the two women is real – as different as black and white, chalk and cheese. And yet, some things don’t change. Having a baby can be as transformative for a young woman today as it was for women of my grandmother’s time. Physical and psychological traits – even memory itself – can be transmitted from mother to child. It is an overarching theme that determines the shape of the novel.
At first glance, the shape of the novel is not immediately apparent. There is a pattern designed to link the mother and the daughter: the past and the future. To my delight, I have found that many readers recognise and enjoy the circularity of the novel’s form. Most reviewers have appreciated the subtlety – which is immensely gratifying to this writer.
[ A Shadow in the Yard by Liz McManus iOpens in new window ]
