Beginner’s Pluck

After a childhood during the Northern Irish Troubles, Eina worked in the media and the arts. “My path was to encourage the creativity of others,” she says, “but I came to writing late in life. The call to write was then so powerful that it overruled my shyness and lack of confidence.”

Working in Dublin, McHugh is taking a year’s sabbatical. “I’ve got a Fulbright scholarship to go to New York and do a project on the imagination and creativity.”

Who is EINA McHUGH?

Date/place of birth: May 25, 1961, in Swindon, England. Moved to Northern Ireland five years later.

Education: Loreto Convent grammar school in Omagh. Trinity College, Dublin, English and French.

Home: Dublin.

Family: Father, a sister and two brothers. My extended family is important to me, too.

The Day Job: Director of the Ark, a children’s cultural centre.

Hobbies: Anything to do with the artistic life; theatre, cinema, exhibitions.

Favourite Writers: Isabel Allende, Amy Bloom, Brian Keenan.

Second Book: None planned at the moment.

Top Writing Tip: To keep your faith alive, choose empathetic first readers.

Web/Twitter: Neither.

THE DEBUT

To Call Myself Beloved, New Island, €12.99; Kindle: Not yet available

In her late twenties, McHugh underwent psychotherapy, and it lasted for several years.

In this intensely personal account, the reader gets a real feel for how the therapy, and the relationship between the patient and therapist, work.

It shows, too, the effect of the Troubles on a child’s later emotional life. It makes for an utterly engrossing read.

“When I was in therapy, I was looking for a book that might give me hope and encouragement, and I could never find it.

“So I made a promise, in a better day, I would write one. I wanted to show the complexity of the inner life, and the mystery and depth of the therapeutic process.”

The Verdict: Original; deeply personal, and compulsive.