Coping with the pressure of an impressive pedigree

RTÉ news reporter Kathleen MacMahon has just launched her debut novel.

Given her family background, it was a relief the book has been received so well, she tells Sue Leonard

MOST writers would kill for a publishing deal, but back in 2009, when Kathleen MacMahon’s first attempt to be published fell at the last hurdle, her overriding emotion was relief.

“The night terrors stopped,” she says. “I felt ‘Thank God’.”

Writing seriously for five years, MacMahon hadn’t got round to telling her family. That could be because of her pedigree. MacMahon’s grandmother was the short story writer, Mary Lavin. Her aunt Elizabeth is a poet, her brother-in-law James Ryan is a novelist, and her late aunt, Caroline Walsh, was literary editor of the Irish Times.

“In my family, people are not going to think you’re wonderful to have written a book.’ They’ll say, ‘Is it any good?’. I was terrified at the idea of anyone reading it.”

Second time around it was much easier. “I’d exorcised the demons in my head,” she says. “Last year I asked my agent, Marianne Gunne O’Connor, not to tell me anything about the process. I said, ‘I trust you. Do what you think is best’.

Two months had passed, when MacMahon, getting home with one of her twin daughters after a piano exam, noticed three missed calls from O’Connor on her phone.

“I rang back and she said, ‘I’ve just sold your book for half a million’. Since then she’s sold translation rights in 25 languages. It was an extraordinary, pinch yourself kind of day. And this time I felt, I can cope. I’m ready.”

MacMahon is wonderful company, but she’s a conundrum. As an RTÉ reporter she’s in the public eye, yet she swears she’s shy. She hates receptions and launches. Married with 11-year-old twins, she admits to bouts of melancholia. And, though she’s “managing” the fuss around publication day, she’s happiest at home in Sandymount, alone, with a cup of coffee and her laptop.

The debut that caused the furore certainly ticks all the boxes for success. It’s a tender love story between Addie, a melancholic Irishwoman in her mid thirties, and Bruno, an American high flyer who escapes his country’s election vowing he won’t go back unless Obama wins. Stylishly written, it contains the things that MacMahon is passionate about: dogs, swimming, beaches, and politics.

Addie’s father, a cantankerous old-school consultant, gets into a spot of bother over his arrogant lack of a bedside manner.

“I’ve come across that as a news reporter,” says MacMahon. “It would be lovely if doctors treated all their patients as a member of their family, but is it reasonable to expect that? It’s hard for them meeting modern expectations when they encounter death every day.”

The author started with the idea of melancholia and depression, and the challenge of trying to find joy. But it became a book about love, family, children and that glorious sense of being alive. It also explores the way we deal with the expectation of a loved one’s death. And that was something MacMahon had never experienced.

“I remember thinking about that and realising I would just have to draw on my instincts and make it up. And I did worry, was it a huge liberty to take with something that does happen to people?”

In a cruel twist of fate, MacMahon now knows she got it right. With the book practically completed, her mother was diagnosed with cancer, and has since died. “I was surprised, when we experienced her death, how close it was to what I had written. It’s given me confidence for the future. And that’s the job of a writer. To draw on deep wells, and to imagine how something must feel.”

MacMahon is extremely happy with her book. She has an inner confidence, and confirms that her life has been one of continued success. Academic at school, MacMahon gained the high points for her college of choice. She studied languages and marketing at Dublin City University, but dropped out after two years realising it had been a terrible mistake.

“I thought my life was over,” she says. “I waitressed for two years, then Caroline Walsh said, ‘Why don’t you study English?’.” She did, along with history at UCD, before moving to Cambridge University to take a masters in history. And then, after two years of freelancing, MacMahon joined RTÉ. And she’s still there, though these days she job shares to make time for the writing.

In the book, Addie, an architect, has been badly hit by the recession. MacMahon, in contrast, has had no moments of financial panic. Her husband Mark works in the IT business, so the money, though clearly welcome, wasn’t the reason that she wrote the book. “I wrote it for myself, really. I set out to write the kind of book I enjoy reading.”

Before she starts writing, MacMahon takes notes on scraps of paper and on the back of bus tickets. “I write little snippets, everywhere. Like in the changing rooms at the swimming pool. I’ll write about the way Bruno walks, his body tilting slightly forwards. I have the story in my head first. Then I sit down to write.

“In an ideal writing day, my husband, or I, will walk the dog. Then at 8.20am the children walk off to school, and I sit down to write at 8.30am. I work through until 2.10pm, when the children come back from school.

“Some afternoons I have a childminder, and I decamp to the library to write. Sometimes I write in bed. Other times I write with a child beside me on the sofa, who is passing me notes saying, ‘Can I have some toast?’”

MacMahon remembers reading Tatty by Paullina Simons, at the busiest possible time in her life.

“It was when the twins had just been born. One was in intensive care in Holles Street, and the other was in Mount Carmel. I was going between the two hospitals breastfeeding. I remember the joy of collapsing into bed and getting back to this wonderful book.”

Her favourite writers include William Trevor and Annie Proux. But she especially adores the books of Anne Tyler.

“Tyler said recently if she could do back to any time in her life, she’d go back to when she wrote her first novel and her daughter was 11. That resonated with me. Because that’s where I’m at now.”

* This is How it Ends by Kathleen MacMahon is published by Sphere at €14.99. Kindle: €7.61.