Home is where the heart is

“The current book is about home and the different forms that home can take; a marriage, a house, a country or a childhood,” says Molly McCloskey. “It deals with how we survive the loss of our various homes as we grow up and go through life and how we find new homes.”

Molly's notion of home is possibly more fluid than most, having been born in Philadelphia and raised in North Carolina and Oregon. Her travels weren't confined to the States. Molly upped sticks and came to Ireland in the late 1980s where she spent ten years on the west coast before winding up in Dublin, living there until 2013.
“I came over in 1989 intending to stay for six weeks, then stayed for 23 years,” Anne says in her wonderful soft southern US tone. “When you are young and don't have a job or responsibilities to go back to, well... things happen. Then suddenly you find; this is your life. I was here for a good while.”
For a young American the appeal of Ireland at the end of the 1980s was more romantic than practical.
“I think I came because it looked like a beautiful, fun, interesting place. I found that it was. I felt really comfortable here. It was a really interesting place to be.”
When Molly landed on our shores Patrick Hillery was in residence in Áras an Uachtaráin and Charles Haughey lead a Fianna Fail/PD government as Taoiseach. It was a time of transition for the country.
“1989 was sort of an end of an era,” she says. “Within a few years Ireland was a very different place. It was kind of an interesting time to have arrived. Over the next 23 years I got to see some really big changes in Irish society. Social, economic and cultural change that were very interesting to witness as an outsider.”

Echoed

Molly's Irish adventures are echoed in her latest novel. 'When Light Is Like Water' sees Alice, a young American arriving in the west of Ireland with no plans and no strong attachments - except to her beloved mother, who raised her on her own. She falls in love with an Irishman, marries him, and settles down in a place whose codes she struggles to crack. And then, in the course of a single hot summer, she embarks on an affair that breaks her marriage and sets her life on a new course. Years later, in the aftermath of her mother's death, Alice finds herself back in Ireland and contemplating the forces that led her to put down roots and then tear them up again.
Whilst the story is grounded in her inherent understanding of the American protagonist and the accurate depiction of the setting, Molly's not an author who ascribes to the rule of write what you know.
“I think you should write about what you are very curious to know about. If you limit yourself to what you know, then that does not seem like a very interesting way to go about it [writing]. A lot of what I write about is from what I know, but I have also learned a lot from writing about them.”
“Research is great fun, but it is sort of a black hole that writers can fall into. You think that you have to keep researching and it gives you an excuse not to get on with the writing. I enjoy sitting down at a desk, even a bad day is more enjoyable than any day job I have had.”

Jaw dropping

The bad days are few and far between judging by the lavish praise her new book has garnered from such literary giants as Roddy Doyle and Mary Costello. For example, the press promo has Joseph O’Connor gush: “Molly McCloskey’s prose has such immense authority, precision and seriousness, and her storytelling is powered by an exquisite sense of writerly tact as much as by the ability to drop your jaw.”
This Thursday's Cavan Town event will see her interviewed by Man Booker prize winner Anne Enright. It's quite the coup for Cavan Library Services as it is one of just six interviews with renowned authors nationwide the Laureate For Irish Fiction will conduct as part of the 'The Readers' Voice' series.
“I am looking forward to coming to Cavan for two reasons; one is that it will be great to meet Anne and have a discussion with her. I really admire her work. The other is because of one of Cavan's favourite sons, Dermot Healy. He was the first person to publish my fiction in Drumlin magazine.”
That connection with Dermot, who passed away in 2014, was very important to Molly's path.
“I got to know him in Sligo. He was very important to me as a young writer. I can't think of Cavan without thinking of Dermot. It is sort of bitter sweet association now that he is gone,” she says.
Hopefully the Cavan event will also see Molly get the chance to discuss her other works, two short story collections, her first novel, Protection and her memoir, 'Circles Around The Sun'. This focuses on her families response to the onset of her brother's schizophrenia. The writer's ability to give a frank account of a deeply personal issue is in contrast with a traditional Irish reticence to discuss such issues.
“I think that in general that's true, but it has changed a lot over the last number of years. I have a very close friend in America, who is from Dublin, who published a memoir last year, called 'An Affair With My Mother' about her relationship with her birth mother.
“I think that would have been a very difficult book for her to write had she lived here all her life, because there is an unspoken expectation thing that you don't talk about personal things in public. It has been to the detriment of the culture, as we know from the things that have come out. Things that were never spoken about, like the experiences of the mother and baby homes.
“The story she told was about adoption and secrecy and the damage that secrecy can do. I think there is something to be said for discretion, but there is also a price that individuals pay and the culture pays for wrong things that go on. I really think that things have changed a lot in the last 20 years,” Molly says.

Molly McCloskey's discussion with Anne Enright, which is presented in partnership with The Arts Council and RTÉ Radio One, is an unmissable event for any lovers of literature. It will be held in Johnston Central Library, Cavan Town on Thursday May 4 at 7pm.