Lisa McInerney's prize-winning novel 'The Glorious Heresies' inspired by Cork

Galway-born author Lisa McInerney was inspired by the Cork vernacular to write a prize-winning novel set in her adopted city, says Colette Sheridan

AN honorary Cork woman, author Lisa McInerney is looking forward to taking part in Crosstown Drift at the Cork Midsummer Festival. It will see the author of City of Bohane and Beatlebone, Kevin Barry, introducing some of the finest writers based in Ireland today in some of Cork’s most intimate and unusual locations. Cork is where McInerney found her voice. And what a distinctive, edgy and streetwise voice that is. She has just won the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction for her debut novel, The Glorious Heresies, set in Cork where she spent many years. The prize is worth £30,000.

The Galway-born writer, who now lives in Gort with her husband and daughter, says that winning the prestigious prize “is very much a validating thing. In a literary context, it’s one of the bigger prizes and is open to books written by women in English all over the world. So it’s a great boost. It is giving me the profile that I would have liked to have built by maybe book four. To have it happen already is a massive step. I was up against people like Anne Enright, Elizabeth Strauss and Kate Atkinson.”

McInerney feels that literary prizes specifically aimed at women writers are necessary. “When you think about literary fiction written by men, it’s automatically assumed that they’re writing about universal themes and the human condition. Women writers are almost straight away battling against the assumption that their writing is personal and domestic. I found that a lot with The Glorious Heresies. It’s a novel in which all sorts of people get up to terrible things. People were expressing amazement at it, saying it’s such a male novel. What does that mean? They actually thought they were complimenting me. There’s an assumption that women don’t have a diversity of voices, that the things women write about are limited. That’s ridiculous. If you look at the Bailey prize long list, it’s beyond diverse with science fiction in there.”

McInerney, who describes herself as working class, was brought up by her grandparents as her mother was only 19 when she became pregnant with her and her father wasn’t around. The youngest of eight ‘siblings’ who were in fact her aunts and uncles, McInerney was a voracious reader as a child, often left to her own devices as the family was much older than her. She knew about her real mother from an early age and she has always been an important part of McInerney’s life.

With cousins in Carrigaline, McInerney has a second family there. “Because I spent a lot of time growing up in Carrigaline, I got to know Cork and to this day, I always say I know Cork better than Galway.”

McInerney dropped out of her studies in English and geography at UCC. She wasn’t even 17 when she started college and didn’t know what she wanted to do. “I went back home and met my husband – who’s from Cork – in Galway. We moved back down to Cork and my daughter went to primary school there. I worked for years in a construction company in Carrigaline answering the phone. I prefer Cork to Galway. I was there at an age where I got to know myself. I feel it’s the place where I learned who I was. And Cork gave me that first taste of freedom and adulthood.”

For financial reasons, McInerney and her family moved to Gort. “Rent in Cork is expensive. I knew that if I stayed in Cork, I’d always have to work full-time. In Gort, I can afford to work freelance and write. It was a practical move. The plan is definitely to go back to Cork.”

The Glorious Heresies is about a bunch of interconnected people, some of whom are drug dealers, petty criminals and prostitutes. Asked if the characters are based on real people, McInerney says: “Not necessarily. But there’s a lot of things the characters get up to that echo people I know and love who have made bad decisions. I think lives like that are not seen as often as they should be seen in literary fiction. I’m not really interested in doing those big middle-class literary themes. I’m interested in lives that aren’t seen as literary subjects. At this point, I can’t see myself writing about anything else. It’s the writer’s duty to put humanity into their characters and if you can’t put yourself in someone else’s shoes, then you’re not much of a writer.”

There is plenty of humour in McInerney’s novel. “I write in the Irish vernacular. Irish people are funny and how we speak is funny. We also have a massive capacity for black humour which I think has to do with our turbulent history.”

McInerney has already written her second novel, also set in Cork. “It’s not a direct sequel to The Glorious Heresies but it takes place in the same universe. It should be out in the spring of 2017.”

Astonishingly, McInerney completed the first draft of her debut novel in four months. “It was a ridiculously short length of time. I think you can kind of see that in the pacing of the novel. It’s very fast, moving at a breakneck speed. The characters existed in my head for a very long time so they were fully formed by the time I put pen to paper. After that, there was some tweaking,” says McInerney, a keen observer of life and a born writer.

Crosstown Drift takes place in various locations around Cork city on June 25. www.corkmidsummer.com.

CATCHING THE CROSSTOWN DRIFT

Tomorrow, Lisa McInterney and various other authors will give free readings across the city of Cork as part an event organised by Curlew Editions and the Good Room. In the evening, many of these authors will gather at Live at St Luke’s for a finale of further readings, discussion and music (€20). “We’re trying to get away from the idea that such readings belong only in bookshops or libraries,” says Joe Kelly, who developed the event with author Kevin Barry.

11am: Alchemy Coffee and Book Shop, Barrack Street: The Penny Dreadful presents...!

12am: Elizabeth Fort, Barrack’s Street: Kevin Barry; Sara Baume; Conal Creedon

1pm: The Counting House at Beamish & Crawford, South Main Street: Theo Dorgan; Gerry Murphy; Paula Meehan; and Tony Curtis

2pm: Sample Studios, Sullivan’s Quay: Sinead Gleeson and Danielle McLaughlin

3pm: CIT School of Music, Union Quay: Lisa McInerney and Rob Doyle

4pm: Mother Jones’s Flea Market, York Hill off MacCurtain Street: Mike McCormack and Madeleine D’Arcy

5pm: The Grocers Club (meet by The Rob Roy, Cook Street): William Wall and Claire-Louise Bennett

5pm: Callanan’s Bar, 24 George’s Quay: Readers announced on arrival.

*Limited capacity at venues; admission is first-come, first-served.

Crosstown Drift at The Farmgate Café: 6pm–7.30pm: €35

The Crosstown Drift trail takes a pitstop at the Farmgate for food and drink, poetry and prose, and music too. Ticket price includes a cocktail, a main course and coffee. Hosted by Cork writer Conal Creedon, there will be readings from William Wall, Madeleine D’arcy, Gerry Murphy and Tony Curtis plus music offerings from Morning Veils and Kevin Jansson.

Live at St Luke’s: 8pm–10.30pm (hosted by Kevin Barry); €20. Join host Kevin Barry for the final event of Crosstown Drift for a finale of music, readings, conversation and more from Sara Baume, Rob Doyle, Lisa McInerney, Conal Creedon, Danielle McLaughlin, Mike McCormack, Claire-Louise Bennett, Theo Dorgan, Sinead Gleeson, Paula Meehan. Musical interludes and oddities by Damsel.