Not many siblings write novels together. Even fewer are able to draw on growing up in Africa, writes Anna Carey
It's not surprising that Barbara and Stephanie Keating ended up writing novels together. After all, the sisters started collaborating at an early age. "Stephanie and I always wrote things together when we were children," says Barbara, the younger of the two by three years. "We'd write little pieces, and when our parents had friends in for dinner we'd have a play ready, and the unfortunate guests would have to sit through the play before they could eat."
These little plays, however, took place against an exotic background, because the Keatings grew up in Africa, and their lives there were the inspiration for their new novel, Blood Sisters. Their father was in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the second World War, spending most of it in India. "When he came back, at the end of the war, he decided that he wanted to work in underdeveloped countries," says Barbara. And so, just a few months after Barbara was born, the family moved to Sudan. Two years later, they moved to Kenya, where their father became chief surgeon for the coastal region. And so began a very different life to the one they would have led had they stayed in Ireland.
"We learned at a very early age to shake out our shoes to check for scorpions," says Stephanie. "And to watch out for chains of safari ants." Even in Kenya, they had something in common with their contemporaries back in Ireland: they were educated by Irish Loreto nuns. But they still made regular visits back to Ireland - and elsewhere. "We'd come by boat from Kenya and land somewhere in Europe," says Barbara. "And then we'd take a different route overland each time to Ireland." But once home, the travelling didn't stop. "After about three weeks my dad would get edgy, because he had nothing to do. So he'd sign on for a locum somewhere - it could be Cavan, Monaghan, the Shetlands. So we'd end up in these strange places."
Roving suited the sisters. "I loved that life," says Stephanie. "I still live it, to a degree. I've had a house in France for 10 years, but it's the longest I've ever been based in my entire life. Settled is not really a word in my vocabulary." She is not exaggerating. Several years ago, she and her husband sailed around the world in a boat they built themselves.
After leaving school, Stephanie went to London while her sister returned to Ireland to study law at university. Barbara was a practising barrister for two years before marrying Rory O'Hanlon, who later became a judge. With her marriage, she acquired an instant family. "He was a widower, and he had seven children; the youngest was five and the oldest was sixteen," she says. "So when we married I took on the seven and then had five more. And that kept me busy for a while."
Stephanie, meanwhile, went back to Kenya, where she was offered a job as a journalist on a wildlife magazine. While waiting for her predecessor to serve his notice, she started helping out in a friend's safari company - and began a lifelong career in the tourism industry.
Barbara began writing while bringing up her children. She had always enjoyed putting pen to paper, but she started writing more seriously when her offspring started primary school. "I felt that there wasn't really a good selection of children's theatre stuff," she says. "I always wrote a bit of music as well, so I wrote a musical for the primary school. From then on, I kept writing for children and was commissioned to write a few things."
It was Barbara who suggested that the two sisters collaborate on a literary project. Suggest may not be the right word, as she simply sent her sister what would become the first chapter of their debut novel, To My Daughter in France, and asked what she thought should happen next. "Neither of us knew how the story would develop, because you never knew what the other person was going to do next," says Barbara. Perhaps surprisingly, they stayed apart while writing the books. "We met up for a couple of brainstorming sessions, but we did almost all of it by e-mail and telephone," says Barbara. And, in a feat that will impress many women with sisters, they didn't drive each other mad. "We think differently in many ways, but there is a common bond there as well," says Barbara. "We have hot and heavy arguments, but we can usually agree."
That first novel was set in France and Ireland; for their second book, it was, perhaps, inevitable that the sisters would write about the land they grew up in. "I hadn't gone back for a long time, and I had so many memories of the place that I was afraid would be destroyed," says Barbara. "But as soon I arrived it felt like home; there was no feeling of dislocation at all."
"There's something about Africa that never leaves you," says Stephanie. "You put your feet down there, and it gets hold of you. It's the sense of space, the sense of danger. There's nowhere else like it."
Blood Sisters is published by Harvill Secker, £12.99