

Writer
21st October 2018
29th November 2016
This week’s story, “In the Act of Falling,” is told from the perspective of a woman whose life is fraying. Her husband has lost his job; her nine-year-old son has been suspended from school; her house is too big and too expensive for the family’s reduced circumstances. Did you always know the point in her life at which the story would start?
No. In the earliest versions of the story, she didn’t exist at all. The story began as an urban apocalyptic one, and in place of the tennis net I had nets hanging above the streets of the Dublin city center to protect shoppers from birds that were falling from the sky in the thousands. There was a younger couple in that early version, but no child. The ducks were part of the story from the start; dead, of course—birds, animals, and insects tend not to fare too well in my fiction.
29th November 2016
It began with worms.
In the spring of 2011 I joined Lory Manrique-Hyland’s writing workshop held at the Munster Literature Centre. Over the following weeks I was impressed by the standard and diversity of pieces we workshopped, but one stood out. It featured worms. Yes, dead ones, but live ones as well. Their lifecycle skilfully underscored the dynamics between human characters, made a betrayal story fresh. The author was Danielle McLaughlin.
22nd September 2016
22nd September 2016
22nd September 2016
Through her acute and thoughtful take on issues of truth-telling, McLaughlin reminds us that the novel remains a good mode to investigate our relationship to truth, in part because as a made-up form it remains flexible in its idea of truth. The opening sentence of the novel is the motto from Jennifer’s school: “To be […]