Book Interview: Louise Phillips - 'feeling different made me much more of an observer'

Set in the drug underworld, 'They All Lied' tells of Nadine Fitzmaurice, an insurance manager who is threatened by a gang when her daughter is being held against her will

Louise Phillips returned to writing after attending a class in Tallaght. Pic: Nick Bradshaw

Louise Phillips has always wanted to write. And she started in her early 20s, when, having left school to start work at 15, she returned to education. She adored the craft, but before she’d had any success, life got in the way of her creativity.

“We had three kids and two recession mortgages,” she tells me over Zoom from her home in the Dublin mountains. “My husband was starting his own business. I was, mostly, working full-time, and for periods I cared for my mum. There was no space for anything else.”