Culture Study Podcast - Dozens of Irish Books for Your Summer Reading (with Maggie O’Farrell)!

00:00:00.000 this is the culture study podcast and i'm ann helen peterson i'm maggie farrell and i'm very

00:00:13.460 happy to be here i'm the author of several books including hamlet and my new book is called land

00:00:18.700 maggie you have so many fans in our larger culture study newsletter podcast universe

00:00:26.000 so before we talk about your new book i have to ask what has it been like to watch hamnet

00:00:32.500 become what it has become and i know you were um a co-producer co-writer on the script like

00:00:37.800 it's one of my favorite movies of the last year and not just because paul mescal is my boyfriend

00:00:43.860 and i love his large thighs so much but yeah the last like and you're like you're you're like

00:00:53.080 gearing up to release this new book but also like going through awards season like what has this

00:00:57.220 been like well it's thighs aside um no it's been extremely surreal and really wonderful you know

00:01:07.700 it's not something that i ever ever expected would happen to me i certainly have no thought at all

00:01:15.100 that i would be invited to the oscars to go shopping for a frock so no it was all extremely

00:01:22.760 surprising every kind of every um you know step on the way right when chloe chow asked me to write

00:01:29.220 the screenplay with her every single step was a surprise so yeah yeah it's been a wild ride

00:01:35.840 and it's been so fun to dip my toe into that world and just to see it all up close has been

00:01:42.140 so interesting that just to give you some idea of how weird it was i was i'm just going to say

00:01:47.700 this sentence it's a very weird sentence i was queuing for a limousine at the oscars

00:01:51.220 as you do i'm just gonna say it and i was standing talking to my friend who's with me

00:01:57.580 and i thought to myself that's really weird that man behind me sounds exactly like george

00:02:01.780 clooney that's so weird and then i thought i turned around i thought that's because it is

00:02:06.940 george clooney you know as a kind of civilian it took me a really long time to kind of catch up

00:02:13.200 with that and i thought god he sounds so like it's really uncanny and then i thought well

00:02:17.560 yeah of course it's him he strikes me as one of those people that is absolutely as handsome and

00:02:23.720 stunning like just like movie star handsome in person yeah i think he is actually there are some

00:02:29.500 people that you see him off screen you think oh they look a bit funny but no i can report safely

00:02:35.240 from the front lines of the oscars that he is actually as handsome in real life as he is i can

00:02:39.960 also tell you the safety that chase infinity is literally the most beautiful human being i've ever

00:02:44.440 seen oh my gosh she's extraordinary gorgeous so gorgeous there's something i think she has an

00:02:50.940 inner light bulb she kind of glows she's amazing i think she told me she liked my hair which i was

00:02:55.700 so and i was so starstruck i was kind of oh thanks thanks very much so one of the reasons when i heard

00:03:01.620 that chloe joe was attached to the film i automatically like i knew that it was in good

00:03:06.560 hence the writer her movie from 2017 is one of my favorite movies of the last decade amazing film

00:03:12.400 he just has such a sense of place that works like that it's just an incredible deft touch with it

00:03:21.520 and i was thinking about this as i've been reading your new book which to me has like is so so deep

00:03:30.020 in like a sense of place and it's about place it's about mapping it's about all of these things so

00:03:34.880 Can you talk a little bit about the new book, which will have come out the day before this podcast comes out?

00:03:40.940 With Land, I was setting out, I think, to do two things.

00:03:44.160 Firstly, I wanted it to be a story about a family who is trying to or endeavoring to survive and thrive in the long shadow of the great hunger in Ireland in the middle of the 19th century.

00:03:56.360 But I also wanted it to be, I wanted to write the story, the entire story of a country, the entire history of a country via one plot of land and all the different people who in waves come to live on that land.

00:04:11.060 my sense from reading the acknowledgements is that some of this story does like are some of

00:04:19.700 the stories that are passed down you think i think your great great grandfather like is some

00:04:24.720 of that family lineage interwoven into this yeah so i'm very interested in this novel in the idea

00:04:31.680 of myth and what makes up myth so our family has a myth or had a myth that my great great

00:04:37.980 grandfather worked on the very early maps of Ireland and I had always known this but I'd never

00:04:42.620 really found out how much of it was true you know I think all myth you know folklore myth all has a

00:04:48.740 grain at least a grain of truth in it so I went to find out whether or not this was true so I had

00:04:55.100 searched through many many archives of the British Ordnance Survey which are on Ireland which are

00:05:00.860 based in Dublin and I did find that actually yes it was true and that he'd started working for the

00:05:07.320 British Ordnance Survey in 1848. And if anyone knows a lot about Irish history, they will know

00:05:13.080 that that was two years into the Great Famine. And so that date just stopped me in my tracks,

00:05:19.320 because I couldn't, for the life of me, imagine what that must have been like. So they were

00:05:23.440 revising the maps because of this huge cataclysm that had hit the country, both, you know, natural

00:05:29.920 disaster, political, social, you know, disaster. And, you know, the whole population had completely,

00:05:36.060 so many people have died so many people have been forced to leave um the you know the physical and

00:05:41.880 human geography of Ireland had completely changed because of this disaster I was just trying to

00:05:46.160 imagine what it was like redrawing the maps doing those revisions to the maps what that must have

00:05:50.940 been for somebody who lived through that um so that was kind of the spark for the novel I mean

00:05:55.320 it is a novel I've used what little I can find out really about my great-great-grandfather and

00:06:00.240 his son my great-grandfather as the kind of starting point for the book and his son my

00:06:05.400 great-grandfather that had a very interesting trajectory in that he became a jesuit which

00:06:11.400 isn't something that you just fall into you know it's something that you have to dedicate your life

00:06:16.160 to and it's many many years of training um and then we know that he left being jesuit and he

00:06:22.240 came full circle and became a mapper like his father and that's always really fascinated me

00:06:27.220 why would someone do that? It's such a thing to become a Jesuit. And in Ireland, it's such a huge 0.96

00:06:34.020 thing to leave the church. So yeah, that really fascinated me. So on those kind of very bare

00:06:39.960 bones of a narrative, I built the novel. I also think that The Great Hunger is something that,

00:06:46.200 at least for American audiences, we all know about it. And oftentimes, if your family has

00:06:52.660 some Irish heritage, you know that that's part of why they left Ireland for the United States.

00:06:57.220 are for canada but don't know the textures of it and like reading the book you get such a sense of

00:07:04.000 like the devastation how like just where bodies had to accumulate how entire like swaths of cabins

00:07:12.180 like places where people lived in the tenements like how they were wiped out like they really

00:07:16.260 did remap the landscape in a way that i hadn't considered and it's like that's part of what

00:07:21.900 grips you I think in the novel is this new texture to the information to this history

00:07:27.380 I mean that you know the statistics alone bald though they are speak volumes so between the

00:07:34.040 years of 1846 and 1852 they think it's a conservative estimate to say that a million

00:07:40.080 people died and a further million people were evicted and emigrated mostly quite a lot of them

00:07:49.500 to canada and the united states as you say um i mean there are some historians that say it's far

00:07:54.960 far larger than that it's quite difficult to know but those numbers alone are so bald but that's

00:08:00.240 exactly that's roughly what happened but i think what what interested me in the novel is actually

00:08:05.760 the people who survived and stayed i was trying to imagine what life was like in those years

00:08:13.700 afterwards directly in those years afterwards how these people who were devastated and traumatized

00:08:19.940 and had lost you know most of their families in a lot of cases um what they did you know how they

00:08:25.960 continued to live how they picked themselves up and carried on and I think that was the major

00:08:30.860 theme for me for writing the book and I wanted to also to write about the children so the workhouses

00:08:36.940 were set up and it was a rule that you had to give up your land in order to go into the poor house

00:08:42.460 the workhouse to get so-called relief um and you also you were all separate you were separated

00:08:49.080 so children were separated from parents and vice versa and often the records that were kept were

00:08:55.180 not very accurate so there was a whole generation of children who had real no real idea where they

00:09:01.620 were from and who they belonged to they were completely dispossessed um so their homes no

00:09:06.180 longer existed because they'd probably been evicted and they didn't really some of them

00:09:10.680 didn't know who their parents were and there was one story that really haunted me was that a little

00:09:14.620 girl who went in and it was she was from Killarney and the wardens of the poor house put her down as

00:09:22.060 from Killarney and so her father who'd emigrated to America came back to Ireland and he knew that

00:09:28.560 his family had died and he knew that there was one child who remained and he went to the poor

00:09:32.440 house and he said I'm here for my daughter who's from Killarney and because they had made an

00:09:38.260 administrative error they said no she's not here so he went back to the states and without her i

00:09:44.440 just read the part of the book where you slightly alter that story yes to have it to do with a um

00:09:50.640 the girl's name and like what devastation i know it's awful even thinking about it now it makes it

00:09:56.880 it gives me a kind of horrible horrible shiver down my spine yeah that poor child that poor

00:10:02.680 father and it's just so awful you know this kind of huge in the cauldron of north america you would

00:10:09.040 never be able to find him again yeah we did an episode last year with carolina donahue that was

00:10:16.080 about like the irishification of pop culture and just talking about like why there is so much

00:10:22.180 irish pop culture that like seeps into the global atmosphere like why basically ireland

00:10:28.840 punches way way way above its weight for a country of its size and i highly recommend that episode

00:10:34.520 for anyone but listen it sounds amazing yeah and she's so funny um but we wanted to have you on to

00:10:42.960 talk about something that i think our readers our listeners absolutely love irish lit i love irish

00:10:48.140 lit i especially love irish cinema i have like a ton of i have a phd in media studies and took a

00:10:53.480 bunch of irish lit and film classes but i also think that my exposure is still very much filtered

00:10:59.720 through the like oh well this was nominated for the booker and then so this is what i'm reading

00:11:05.320 um so we wanted to have someone who just much more uh panoramic knowledge exposure loves within

00:11:12.980 irish lit as a whole so we have a bunch of questions from readers who say some of the

00:11:18.180 the pieces that they love, like some of the types of work that they love, Irish and otherwise,

00:11:23.620 and then we're going to come up with suggestions for them. Does that sound good? Okay. Sounds

00:11:28.460 great. It sounds like a kind of game show. I like it. Oh, and also paid subscribers will get links

00:11:35.160 to everything we recommend in the show notes. Okay, let's start with this question from Jacqueline.

00:11:41.760 I am the Irish fiction super fan of my book club and was so excited to hear you are planning this

00:11:47.160 episode. I have especially loved slow, beautiful literary fiction reads that are evocative of a

00:11:54.020 specific time and place in history, like Trespasses by Louise Kennedy, These Days by Lucy

00:12:00.340 Caldwell, and of course, anything by Claire Keegan. What else in this genre can you recommend?

00:12:06.460 I also adored the funny and heartfelt memoir, Did You Hear Mammy Died by Seamus O'Reilly,

00:12:11.840 and overall I feel like there is so much amazing art and writing being created right now by people

00:12:17.760 who came of age at the end of the troubles what else am I missing well I've got to commend her

00:12:22.840 on her taste that's amazing what a brilliant list um I would prescribe for her uh Donal Ryan

00:12:29.300 who I really love he's a writer from Limerick and I think one his I think his earliest book

00:12:35.280 is called The Spinning Heart I think that was his first book and it's an incredible

00:12:39.320 brilliant evocation of modern island seen through a small community and if you like it which i know

00:12:46.680 that you will there are lots he's written several other books all of which are slightly interlinked

00:12:51.600 they're not really sequels but they are about the same community and you see the same characters

00:12:55.700 pop up and you find a little bit what happens to them so his writing is so beautiful and deeply

00:13:00.640 deeply satisfying and i think that'll be i think that's a perfect fit for you i would also say you

00:13:06.060 should try John McGann he's passed on now but he wrote an amazing novel called Amongst Women I

00:13:12.140 think that's his most brilliant book what is it about it's about a family and in particular a

00:13:17.640 really terrifying father who kind of has a hold over his children and some of them kind of succumb

00:13:27.520 to his charms and stay in his orbit and others have to rest themselves free he's a very very

00:13:34.180 chilling anti-hero and it's a an incredible book the other one that i would suggest is uh nile

00:13:40.500 williams's this is happiness um which is about a very small community in 1958 as electrification

00:13:49.660 is coming and i think sometimes people forget that electrification did not like come everywhere in

00:13:55.720 the world in like i don't know like sometime in the 1920s or something like it there's a very

00:14:03.140 long spread it's still there's still not electrification in many places but 1958 like

00:14:08.420 a really fascinating sort of hinge point in terms of like coming into modernity that sort of thing

00:14:15.740 um and williams just writes about the land with an incredible evocativeness that i always

00:14:21.960 appreciate and it's like it makes you feel very happy without being saccharine in any way

00:14:28.320 i think that's how i would describe it yeah that's a nice one

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00:17:47.940 checkout after you purchase they will ask you where you heard about them please support our

00:17:52.040 show and tell them that Culture Studies sent you. Okay, next question comes from Allison,

00:18:02.580 and Melody's going to read it. Looking for fiction similar to Anne Cleaves and Tana French.

00:18:07.300 Well-written, compelling stories, complex characters, strong sense of place. Bonus

00:18:11.600 points for good audiobooks. Doesn't have to be mystery or crime fiction or a series,

00:18:16.140 but the kind of book that you just have to stay up late or call in sick to finish.

00:18:20.580 Clear would be an example that isn't genre fiction.

00:18:24.040 Hmm.

00:18:24.680 Okay.

00:18:25.720 I love it.

00:18:26.780 I thought it was a great book.

00:18:28.100 Same.

00:18:29.160 Yeah, I would say it's not exactly a mystery,

00:18:33.000 but it's a kind of like a literary puzzle in a way.

00:18:36.660 And it's Haven by Emma Donoghue.

00:18:39.000 Oh, yes.

00:18:40.320 Yeah, I love this book.

00:18:42.460 And I mean, I love Emma Donoghue.

00:18:44.500 I would read a shopping list if she was going to publish one.

00:18:47.020 um but this is about um three religious people who are going they travel out into the in a kind

00:18:56.600 of terrifyingly small boat into the sea to set up a religious community on a very remote island

00:19:03.540 and it i loved it because it really surprised me two or three times i i love books that there is

00:19:12.140 a massive right angle and i wasn't i didn't see it coming and this book does that and

00:19:16.660 I don't without giving too much away there is a really interesting mystery at the heart of it

00:19:21.780 so I'm glad you brought up Emma Donoghue because my recommendation here was going to be

00:19:26.500 the wonder by her oh that's interesting yes which is about how do I describe this basically in it's

00:19:34.160 like 1850s small town and an English nurse yes post and an English nurse yes so there's all of

00:19:43.980 the like discourses about the famine and hunger and how we control or can't control hunger going

00:19:49.940 on in there. But she it's an English nurse comes to watch over this 11 year old girl who

00:19:56.100 stopped eating on her 11th birthday four months before. And you watch as like the nurse has to

00:20:03.400 be like believes that like the family is conspiring to try to make this like to make a

00:20:09.100 I don't know like a miracle essentially but then how do you how do you say that how like do you

00:20:14.300 believe the 11 year old do you believe like is she actually existing on manna from heaven she

00:20:19.640 also seems very important as in terms of like a figure in the community like her surviving seems

00:20:26.020 very important so yeah so just Emma Donahue also for people who might like be like oh that name's

00:20:32.840 so familiar she wrote room and i think it's just particularly skilled at crafting these sorts of

00:20:40.000 compulsive and unlocked like the narrative unlocked slowly for you i guess yeah and she

00:20:48.460 loves to pull the rug out from under your feet i think in a very fine way yes um do you have any

00:20:54.540 other ones there you don't have to it's okay we have so many questions did i have um god so i

00:21:00.120 actually had the wonder on a bit later um you can suggest that one for later too we can have it

00:21:06.960 come up in many places yeah no i think that was my that was my only mystery one i think okay all

00:21:14.420 right next question is from amy i am looking for any sort of family drama in the vein of

00:21:21.300 instructions for a heat wave or this must be the place i love anything with a large cast of

00:21:26.840 characters and lots of people making lots of choices and dealing with the fallout of those

00:21:32.300 choices i definitely would prefer it to be a little less bleak than the beasting though

00:21:36.960 okay irish family dramas that aren't too bleak i feel like mine are all bleak

00:21:43.020 how long have you got really i mean there's so many amazing you know that a lot of novels are

00:21:48.660 about family because i think family is a very important thing in irish culture i think one of

00:21:53.000 my recent discoveries and a real favorite of mine is a debut novel by sean farrell no relation um

00:22:00.520 and it's called frogs for watchdogs and it's it's mainly set from a child's point of view and he

00:22:07.200 is living in a slightly sort of rackety lifestyle because his parents have separated and he's living

00:22:12.360 with his mom on a farm and it's about the very very slow building of a relationship between him

00:22:20.840 and his mother's new boyfriend um and there was so it's it's it's a very very moving book and

00:22:27.540 there were several times when I was a bit worried about this new man coming into the household and

00:22:32.460 I thought where I don't know if where's this novel going but it's nothing like that thank

00:22:37.340 goodness because I I find I would find that a bit disturbing but it's a very it's a really

00:22:42.600 beautiful book about the kind of making of a unusual family why do you think that family is

00:22:49.300 so central to irish literature like i think there are a lot of different places that have family as

00:22:56.280 like a centerpiece a narrative centerpiece but say like british lit i don't think so i don't

00:23:01.660 think the family is central um but i mean families are a ready-made plot really aren't they

00:23:07.640 i think for any novelists you know if you have a family of five like the one say i grew up in my

00:23:13.720 my own you know family now um you've got i think it's at 25 different relationships my maths is

00:23:19.740 terrible it's kind of thing yeah yeah and so all you need to do is just kind of put five characters

00:23:24.540 in a room and set them going you know uh so i think it is but i think you know they tend to be

00:23:29.860 families tend to be large in ireland and um there is an awful there's quite a lot of literature

00:23:35.740 which is about ownership and land and you know the farm who who inherits and all that i mean it's

00:23:42.400 just a very it's a very very potent narrative i think i mean but there are so many yeah i think

00:23:47.500 for families and enright is absolutely brilliant right oh i was just you you're gonna steal all my

00:23:53.200 and and and and then coltoy bean i mean yes yes black water light ship that's amazing i mean

00:24:00.100 it's uh yeah there's there's so much there's so much and even uh coltoy beans um the master which

00:24:07.780 is about henry james like is about being closeted it's about like being a very famous writer but

00:24:15.780 it's also ultimately about family and it's about his like sadness that he can't be with his sister

00:24:20.860 like it's really it's a family novel as well yeah absolutely another one which i really love is

00:24:26.680 called the dinner party by sarah gilmartin oh yeah i've heard of this which is a really fabulous

00:24:31.800 book about a very very complicated family and lots of people arriving and leaving and the sort of

00:24:36.200 effect of different the choices of different generations has a kind of knock-on effect on

00:24:40.320 the next generation this is a very very satisfying book that you can sink yourself into oh and similar

00:24:46.180 to brooklyn and and the follow-up long island about like what happens with like those who stay

00:24:51.400 and those who leave kind of yeah exactly exactly um the ann enright that i love is i mean the the

00:24:58.220 most famous of hers probably is the gathering um but it's pretty bleak i would say yeah and then

00:25:04.600 the other one that comes to mind actually i haven't read it in so long but it was one of

00:25:08.500 my favorite books that i read in college is um patty clark ha ha ha by roddy doyle oh yes

00:25:14.560 wonderful book and my my memory of reading it is like almost the same as when i read um a tree

00:25:23.600 grows in brooklyn like you feel so transported into this perspective of a young child in a way

00:25:30.040 it's very illuminating I just I really loved it I think the one of my favorite things about that

00:25:35.020 novel which is many things but it's the title because when you see it you think it's going

00:25:39.680 to be humorous and then towards the end you realize what it means and it's so heartbreaking

00:25:45.120 which I won't say what it is but it's it's like a punch in the gut when you realize what it refers

00:25:50.640 do. Yeah. Okay. Next question comes from Erin. I have read Milkman by Anna Burns, Say Nothing

00:25:59.680 by Patrick Radden Keefe, and two books by Flynn Berry, all of which deal with the conflict in

00:26:06.880 Northern Ireland. I would be really interested to hear about other authors whose books deal with

00:26:13.560 this topic um either fiction or non-fiction wow that's a big question um yeah i know just

00:26:20.400 one of my favorite novels about the troubles is is it not i mean i think it was written in the

00:26:27.960 80s maybe i'm wrong uh it's bernard mclavity's cow um i think it's uh i love bernard mclavity

00:26:34.920 and he writes really beautifully about the troubles about a young man who has been caught up

00:26:42.060 in a terrible act and he has the outset of the novel got away with it but it's increasingly

00:26:52.060 begins to catch up with him for reasons that i won't disclose but there's something very very

00:26:58.240 it's a very sort of narrow lens on the troubles but it it gives you a really really clear-eyed

00:27:03.520 vision of what it was actually like i think to live in holster during those years well i always

00:27:08.820 recommend people read milkman alongside say nothing or say nothing first and then milkman

00:27:15.860 because if you don't know anything about the troubles which i know that's so odd for someone

00:27:21.240 to like come into a book without an understanding of a like a massive societal like rupture ongoing

00:27:28.280 rupture kept going kept going um but i think that those two paired together are so effective because

00:27:36.020 it gives you like this kind of almost journalistic understanding of like oh here like here's the view

00:27:42.820 of like what what happened from this like more distance view and then the first person omniscient

00:27:49.480 ongoing narrative of milkman and also milkman is so is very funny in a way that obviously say

00:27:57.700 nothing is not funny and then you get like this larger picture of humanity by pairing those two

00:28:03.560 It's got a real pulse.

00:28:04.860 The other thing I would really recommend is a collection of short stories

00:28:08.040 by Lea Dinh Nguyen, which is called Everyone's Still Here.

00:28:12.300 And it's a debut collection, and they are a very young author.

00:28:17.120 I think they were born after the Good Friday Agreement.

00:28:20.440 Wow.

00:28:21.200 And they are the most incredible stories.

00:28:23.680 I don't know what on earth they've been eating, but it's very, very good

00:28:27.680 because they kind of really, really take no prisoners.

00:28:33.000 they are the stories are about kind of trauma and recovery and exactly there's a long list the

00:28:42.640 last story is details the actual real names and circumstances of civilians innocent civilians

00:28:50.340 who were murdered by the british army uh mostly shot in the street and it's very unflinching and

00:28:56.700 it gives you a very amazing insight into modern northern ireland even taking short stories as

00:29:04.080 like the approach just seems like such a different way than we usually see it narrativized and i

00:29:09.120 that sounds amazing yeah i can't recommend them highly enough they're absolute brilliant i think

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00:33:49.120 Next question comes from another listener named Erin, which is fitting.

00:33:53.140 Hi, Maggie.

00:33:53.820 I love your work.

00:33:54.660 I've also read and loved Ordinary Saints by Niamh Nouvlion, The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, and The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue.

00:34:03.440 I like messy families, complicated relationships, and ambiguous endings.

00:34:08.440 Plot is definitely secondary for me.

00:34:10.340 Thanks.

00:34:12.860 I'm going to get a slight limb now and recommend a book which is set in ancient Greece.

00:34:18.940 Oh, yeah.

00:34:19.540 But it's by an Irish writer called Ferdia Lennon.

00:34:22.620 and i absolutely love this book it's called glorious exploits and it's about two young guys

00:34:30.160 in ancient greece and in syracuse and it's shortly after the war and they have um there are kind of

00:34:38.020 prisoners of war all waiting in the quarry and they decide that they're going to put on a production

00:34:43.560 of euripides and they're going to get the prisoners to star in it but what's so incredible about it

00:34:50.440 and it completely works and it makes me laugh every time is that the two of them talk like

00:34:55.360 lads from limerick so but it's so it's an amazing kind of it's a weird disconnect you're in ancient

00:35:03.380 greece and um and i think ferdi lennon the writer is a kind of expert in ancient greece so he really

00:35:09.060 knows his stuff yeah but they like lads from limerick so it's an it's a brilliant disconnect

00:35:13.280 but it it's somehow it really works and it's extraordinarily moving and brilliant and also

00:35:20.100 very, very funny. I mean, you know, given that the subject is kind of prisoners of war and art,

00:35:26.080 it's very funny, but also very moving. So I think it's so unusual, but so brilliant.

00:35:32.080 I love that. Mine is very different. It's The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright. Have you read

00:35:37.660 that one? Yeah, I have. Yeah, I've read everything that Anne Enright could possibly publish. I love

00:35:42.100 her. That book, it's very sexy. And then it becomes very ambiguous in like the way life

00:35:50.060 does not in like a sexy and then like tragedy it's more like there's an affair this is not a

00:35:56.720 spoiler there's an affair and then what happens when you actually like get married to the person

00:36:02.020 you have an affair with essentially um but i just i love there's a strong sense of interiority in

00:36:09.080 this one and i just thought it was very beautifully wrought and yeah there's plot like in terms of

00:36:13.940 there's an affair and there's a breakup but it is also very much about dealing with a feeling

00:36:19.400 like what's the aftermath of a feeling and when you act on it sort of thing um okay next question

00:36:26.320 this is from Bryn I'd love to have some recommendations of books translated from

00:36:31.540 Gaelic or that play with language and translation I loved A Ghost in the Throat by Doreen Negrifa

00:36:38.140 which kind of gets at this as does the band Kneecap perhaps Milkman by Anna Burns would be

00:36:45.040 another way of thinking about this or brian friol's play translations oh that's a big question

00:36:52.780 i i know i love flan o'brien's novel but i think if we i think one of my favorite poets who wrote

00:37:00.900 in irish is nula needonal um her poetry has been translated by uh med mcgackian and seamus heaney

00:37:10.400 Paul Muldoon and she interestingly she was born in England uh to Irish parents but they spoke

00:37:17.660 Irish at home but then she did I think when she did she did go and live in Ireland later

00:37:23.600 in her life um and she's written a brilliant poem called The Language Issue which explains she kind

00:37:29.760 of sets out her decision not to write in English it's uh it's it's really wonderful her all her

00:37:36.660 work is is really fascinating this kind of um she explores the kind of duality of her identity

00:37:42.700 having been born in england but irish being her mother tongue which is i think it's pretty

00:37:47.440 for people born in britain right right yeah she's she's really wonderful have you noticed so i have

00:37:54.720 um a ghost in the throat on my pile forever i've been really wanting to read it and there is

00:38:00.400 something that people um like what do you think happens when a book is written in irish and then

00:38:06.480 translated like what is like is there a particular alchemy that you get I think so I mean I think you

00:38:12.100 know I think with all translations a huge amount depends on who's translating who's translating

00:38:18.140 right and I think you know I mean I think a lot of writers are people who are in a sense um have

00:38:24.180 two feet in two camps and they are observers and maybe that the kind of slippage between languages

00:38:30.660 gives you that I don't know I mean it's hard to generalize I think did Seamus Heaney ever write

00:38:36.060 in gaelic not as far as i know i don't yeah his his wife marie heaney she wrote an amazing

00:38:43.960 collection of she rewrote a lot of irish myths which is one of my favorite versions of irish

00:38:50.980 folklore oh i love that what's it called over nine waves and also the names upon the harp

00:38:56.700 and you know she she's translated all these several cycles of irish myths and the heroes

00:39:02.800 and battles and yeah they're wonderful really amazing and if any any of any of your readers

00:39:09.020 ever go to northern ireland please go to the seamus heaney center it is so incredible it's

00:39:14.400 one of my favorite places in this really beautiful building and it's got you can see his very famous

00:39:19.400 duffel coat among other things but one of the things that i always look at whenever i'm there

00:39:23.440 is not only his fountain pen which i love but uh they have a display of the different

00:39:29.420 drafts of some of his poems and his amendments and his reworkings. And that is just absolute

00:39:36.300 catnip. I can't stop looking at it. And you can see the kind of mechanics of his genius.

00:39:42.980 So I took my first class in Irish Lit. I was a sophomore in college. And the teacher was this

00:39:48.860 old, you know, from Irish family. He was probably in his 70s, built like a boxer. Just he loved

00:39:58.220 Seamus Heaney so much and when Seamus Heaney when the college arranged to have Seamus Heaney come

00:40:02.800 speak like it was like the culmination of his life he was like this is and he he was able to

00:40:08.240 impart that love to me at that age like and also just all the layers that are going on in Seamus

00:40:15.220 Heaney's poetry like and I did not I knew so little about Irish history and I learned so much

00:40:20.160 through reading Seamus Heaney in like a wonderful way I you know I didn't bring him up earlier

00:40:25.680 because sometimes I wonder if he's like so overdetermined as like the Irish poet that it's

00:40:30.980 almost annoying. Do you feel that way or no? Oh, no. I mean, he's he's he's famous for a very good

00:40:37.340 reason. Exactly. That's how I feel. I'm like my I have I have his collection open ground. Like

00:40:43.260 it's one of the few books from college that has always moved like through all of the moves with

00:40:47.760 me. It still has like the the little thing from the college bookstore. And it's all my like,

00:40:54.600 you know marginalia and everything in it it's very precious to me good yeah may it stay that

00:41:00.120 way yeah i i don't think someone should be penalized for being good at their job

00:41:03.580 okay this one's from victoria and i can't wait for your answer on it i'm in a nun slash weird

00:41:11.100 catholic phase despite not being religious and absolutely adored ordinary saints by neem neem

00:41:17.700 do you have any more recommendations for irish literature that takes this topic for a contemporary

00:41:23.160 spin? As it happens, I do. I would recommend Hagstone by Sinead Gleeson, which is about a

00:41:30.920 young artist who travels to live in a religious community. It's an amazing novel. And again,

00:41:37.360 a bit quite sort of in the vein of Emma Donoghue, I would think, but it surprises you. It's not what

00:41:43.740 you expect. And it certainly examines at very, very close quarters the Catholicism in modern

00:41:50.160 island and religious communities and so maybe that would be up your street there is just so

00:41:54.480 much to mine there like and even you know you were referencing like your was it your great

00:41:59.200 grandfather who became a jesuit and then went back to yeah like so much what are the what are

00:42:05.540 the options that are open for women to live the way that they want to live like sometimes it's

00:42:10.900 like freedom and confinement almost if that makes sense yeah exactly and i think what gleason does

00:42:16.480 so brilliantly is lay alongside you know i think that there's a there's a kind of there's an

00:42:21.980 awareness that you know the irish paganism is one of the best preserved celtic societies and

00:42:28.300 beliefs and you can kind of almost see them coexisting in modern ireland and i think she

00:42:33.360 addresses that issue very very beautifully in this novel wonderful so for our last three questions

00:42:39.780 we're going to turn to genre fiction and this will be today's ask anne anything so if you want

00:42:45.400 our recommendations for irish mysteries romances and fantasies head to patreon.com slash culture

00:42:52.200 study and sign up this has been such a pleasure everything that we imagined and more if people

00:42:56.840 want to find more from you where's the best place that they can follow for more news for everything

00:43:02.480 um there is an instagram account i have to confess i don't write it but that's great

00:43:09.380 Occasionally, once in a while, I do post pictures of my cat.

00:43:13.580 So I think it's called Maggie Fowl Official, which sounds really strange, doesn't it?

00:43:21.360 Is it Handle? You call it Handle, don't you?

00:43:23.480 My teenagers will be hard to listen to me.

00:43:25.620 Yeah, as you can probably tell, I don't really use social media,

00:43:28.660 but there is an account which has lots of stuff on it.

00:43:31.460 Wonderful. And everyone, we will link prominently for land all over the place.

00:43:36.120 I am totally in love with it and I can't wait to finish.

00:43:39.380 So thank you again for coming on the pod.

00:43:41.140 Thank you so much for having me.

00:43:42.480 Take care.

00:43:46.660 Thanks for listening to the Culture Study Podcast.

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00:44:34.460 Melody at Melodias 47 and the show at Culture Study Pod.

Culture Study Podcast - June 03, 2026

Dozens of Irish Books for Your Summer Reading (with Maggie O’Farrell)!

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