Book review: Cork author's new novel shows empathy for plight of women
Billy O’Callaghan: ‘I work a lot on the sentences so for somebody like John Banville to single out that book is validation. When we think of stylists, he’s probably the best.’ Picture: Yui Mok/PA
WHAT comes across from Cork writer, Billy O'Callaghan's latest novel, 'Life Sentences', is a deep empathy for the plight of women, particularly impoverished women rearing children. His book, a family saga based on the stories that his grandmother, Nellie, told him, tells her story, that of his great -grandfather, Jer, as well as his great-great-grandmother Nancy. Based in Douglas, where O'Callaghan grew up and still lives, the novel concerns the effort "to survive at all costs. Everything is done for the sake of family. There is something almost heroic about it. No child dreams of growing up to be a prostitute. That's not on anyone's list of things someone wants to do. But it was what Nancy had to do to survive. When she got out of the workhouse, she was on the streets for a while."
Nancy was mother to two 'illegitimate' children, Mamie and Jer. They were fathered by a Michael Egan, a man Nancy loved and hoped would "save her." But he turned out to be unreliable. Nancy eventually found lodgings for her family in the corner of a room in Douglas where they slept curled up on straw. She would go on to work as a servant.
