Anthony Glavin is all too aware of the irony of his project; he is an American living in Ireland writing a novel about an Irish man living in America.
"It's audacious, I know," he laughs, "but though I make no great claims for the universality of Nighthawk Alley. The book is really about the feelings of the immigrant and I'm all too familiar with that."
Born in Boston, third generation Irish - ("I think it's third generation, I can never quite work out those things") - Anthony was very much reared in the Irish American tradition. His mother was an avid reader of Anglo-Irish literature and he went to Harvard and studied literature before taking off for a stint in Costa Rica with the Peace Corps.
Writing was his object when he arrived in Ireland in 1974. Her could just as easily have chosen Spain, but he decided to avoid the extra obstacle imposed by a second language. He worked almost solely on short stories, contributing to the Irish Press's New Irish Writing page which was edited by David Marcus, and continued to hopback and forth between Ireland and the States.
Marcus encouraged him to write a short story collection entitled One For Sorrow which was published by Poolbeg in 1980, and Glavin eventually took over the editorship of the Irish Press page in 1985. He is now literary editor of New Island Books, where his colleague Dermot Bolger suggested he extend a short story, Transplants, into a novel and Nighthawk Alley is the result.
"No sooner were the words out of his mouth than I was thinking "Oh Lord, let me get my hands on it," laughs Anthony. "I love to write about the topography of Boston that I love and still miss. There were also some elements - and I hate to use a phrase like `racial issues' - but the relationship that develops between Mickey, the Dublin-born mechanic and Lionel, his black employee still fascinated me."
For someone who is not a native son, Anthony has truly mastered the Irish idiom - Mickey recounts his tale in a lingo that skillfully mixes Irish phraseology with an American twang.
The book is graced with quotes of praise from Colm Toibin, Nuala O'Faolain and Joseph O'Connor. "One feels so blessed and it did make me breath easier at night before the book was launched. At the end of the day, though, I just keep thinking that it's only a book, after all."