INTERVIEW: Offaly woman's first novel gets great reviews, and there could be more on the way

An Offaly woman whose first novel has attracted positive reviews has at least one more book in the pipeline.

When I met the author and Rahan native Mary Minnock in the Old Warehouse recently she reminded me that she previously worked there, using her fluency in French to guide tourists around what was then the Tullamore DEW visitor centre.

One of nine children, a past pupil of Killina secondary school, Rahan and St Joseph of Cluny, Ferbane; a business graduate, a mother of four, a former resident of Paris; and much more, Mary has many the story to tell.

Now, at the age of 57, her debut book of fiction, Homesick, is available in local Tullamore bookshops and on Amazon in both print and audio formats.

So how did she come to be a writer?

“I've always loved writing. When I was little I used to write stories, I'm the eldest of nine and I would sell the stories to my brothers and sisters and cousins,” she says.

“I would make magazines. And then at one point I wanted to be a writer. And then I kind of got to the point where I thought 'That's ridiculous', that's like saying 'I want to be a fairy princess, that's just not going to happen'. So I went, 'Be practical'.”

Mary studied business after completing the Leaving Certificate and her life subsequently took her to France and marriage and children and work on a major climate change research project.

But the seed of creativity which lay dormant from when she was just a little girl was always finding a way of pushing through the surface.

Once, when she moved to California with her then husband and their children she joined a writing class “just to get out of the house”.

“I went on this course and the Americans, especially Californians, are just so 'can do'. Nothing is beyond them and I sort of went, 'Maybe I can do this'. So I got motivated and I started writing. But then I just didn't get anywhere with traditional publishing. It was really rough. Only about one per cent of submitted manuscripts get published. It's really hard.”

Time passed and 'self publishing' came along and got firmly established, evolving to the point where it was a viable option for an author like Mary.

Technological advances in printing mean that books like Homesick can be printed on demand once someone places an order on Amazon anywhere in the world.

The book is available on Kindle too and Mary also learned sound editing skills and voiced the audio version.

Mary got in touch about the book and posted me a hard copy. Once I started it I had it read in a few days. Mary is glad to tell me I was not alone.

“I would say most people who start it finish it” says Mary. “I took it badly at first when people would say to me, 'It's an easy read'. I said to myself, is that good? That it's an easy read?”

She came to realise however that its accessibility certainly is a good thing, especially if the alternative is an impenetrable tome whose reach is much shorter and its potential audience consequently smaller.

She has enjoyed the reaction to the book and is interested in how people's responses have varied so much.

Perhaps the key to unlocking those disparate feelings in readers is the breadth of the characterisation in Homesick. Yes, it's first and foremost the story of one woman, the central character Christina, but thanks to the writer's skill we see inside the heads of all the others who populate the tale.

“It's lovely. People say different things about the book. One of my friends said, 'You know, your book made me ask, was I ever a bully at school?' I was very tough sometimes, I know I was, but I didn't think I was a bully. The character in this doesn't think she's a bully. But she is a bully.”

She said the good feedback has been fantastic: “I love it, it's what I want more than anything, more than sales, more than money. It's not reassurance, it's like I have been having this monologue with myself for the past 15 years and now I am having a conversation.”

She likens the words of praise from readers to the applause a singer might get during a performance. But she knows the effort that would have been required to create that art. “It's been a lot of work and I've rewritten it,” she remarks.

“The thing about self publishing is, the only quality standards that apply are the ones you set for yourself.”

Her work has been rejected before. A previous book “didn't go anywhere” when it was submitted to a publisher. “I came back and wrote this one.”

A woman she knows said she could possibly set up a meeting with a literary agent who has helped writers get deals with publishers like Penguin.

“Two or three years ago I'd have bitten her hand off, and now... maybe not. I love the control [I have] over [the book]. My daughter Mathilde drew the cover.”

Homesick tells the story of Dublin-based Christina's return home to Galway when her mother has a stroke.

Through flashbacks, we learn much about the child Christina and the bullying she experienced. Though Mary says she saw bullying during her school years, she insists Homesick is not autobiographical.

The characters in it are sometimes a patchwork of up to three people and she has been interested in how those who know her have been searching for any real life identities who may have inspired the fictional family members in Homesick.

“I'm actually getting better feedback from people who don't know me because people who know me too well, say, 'Who was that and was that based on that?' whereas people who don't know me read it for what it is.

“I feel like I knew where I was going to start from and I knew where it was going to end. I knew I was going to start in Dublin and end in Galway. But how I was going to get there, and which back roads was I going to take to get there, that came along as I was writing.”

After a spell in France, where her four children were born, Mary lived in Tullamore for a number of years following her separation. She now lives in Dublin.

Others books are undoubtedly on the way.

There is another work in progress too. “The draft I have is about an estranged middle aged couple. They're around 50 and they've been separated for well over 10 years and they have a daughter that they both adore and she's killed in a car accident. They both suspect there is something more to the accident... they find out all sorts of stuff about their daughter's life that they didn't know.” She adds, smiling: “That's obviously not at all autobiographical.”

Will the book she tried to get published in California ever resurface? “I don't know. I think I tried too hard with that first book. Maybe it's a bit like when you say to a child, 'Close your eyes' and they do this (she clenches her eyes together tightly). I was writing too hard instead of being relaxed about it.”

For the moment, Homesick is deservedly getting all the attention. Mary, daughter of the late Martin and Annie Minnock, Rahan, will be at a public reading at Midland Books, High Street, Tullamore, this Thursday, February 29 at 6pm. All are welcome to come along and meet her.