Sinead Moriarty: ‘Writing saved me, definitely’

From the refugee crisis to homelessness, Sinead Moriarty tackles big issues in her books for young readers

Sinead Moriarty: 'I’ve always believed that you never know what’s going on in someone’s life behind their front door.' Picture: Ruth Medjber @ruthlessimagery

Sinead Moriarty has one goal in mind. “For me, the holy grail is that a reader will close my book, young or old, and go, ‘That was engaging, entertaining and made me think’, that’s what I want, what I try to do.” The award-winning writer of 18 novels, Sinead has achieved the remarkable feat of telling stories that appeal to young and older readers alike. For both audiences, she has adopted the same approach — take a serious issue and make it accessible by wrapping it in an engaging tale.

Her latest work The Truth About Riley is aimed at the young adult audience and it tells the story of the eponymous Riley whose dad has just died. A seemingly successful businessman, he left so many debts that Riley and her mother must leave their lovely home and sleep in their car. Her mother gets a job washing dishes in a Polish restaurant, and Riley tries desperately to keep their new circumstances a secret from her friends.

Sinead is in no doubt that younger readers are well able to understand such complex themes as homelessness and climate change, which is the next topic on her mind. She says that if you think back to the stories we all loved as children, such as The Diary of Anne Frank, I Am David by Anne Holm or Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, “they are all very heavy-hitting books and they are the ones that stay with you because they’re the ones you care about”. She had always wanted to write for a younger audience, and her own children kept encouraging her, but Sinead felt strongly that it had to be the right topic and it had to be the right time.

The Truth About Riley is her second book in the genre. Her first The New Girl won the An Post Teen and Young Adult Book of the Year award in 2021. The genesis of that book was the refugee crisis in Syria. Safa’s tale came to Sinead in the form of a child’s story and that’s why she made her first foray in the world of young adult fiction.

She has said that she felt pulled towards writing for children after she saw “the infamous image of the body of a little refugee child washed up on the beach in Greece”. She said: “I couldn’t get the image out of my head and I thought, ‘I have to write about this. I want my children to understand that some people’s lives are incredibly difficult’. I wanted them to understand how important compassion and kindness are in life.” The New Girl was a passion project for Sinead. “Afterwards I thought, ‘God I love this space, I’m really enjoying it and I want to keep going again with themes that I feel are important’.”

Homelessness is one that is close to her heart. “I’ve always believed that you never know what’s going on in someone’s life behind their front door because so many people have problems that their friends aren’t even aware of.” She started thinking about what might happen if a family who lived a very nice life suddenly found themselves homeless and had nowhere to go. Riley is determined that nobody learns the truth about her situation, but this leads to even more stress for her. Her best friend Sophie is lovely but clueless about Riley’s new reality. “Sophie was a really important character because she is the reader,” says Sinead. “How would you know what’s going on in your friend’s life if they’re behaving fairly normally and everything seems to be fine? You take people at their word as a kid, you don’t imagine they’re hiding some horrendous secret. That’s the key to the book, you don’t know what’s going on in someone’s life.”

But there is a ray of light in Riley’s world, thanks to the kindness and compassion shown to her by mother’s employer Maja and the school caretaker, Oleg, who makes sure she has breakfast.

Sinead admits that she loved these characters. “I do believe that in life it’s often the people who have had their own struggles who are the first to put the hand of help out.” It is always a risk mixing up a winning formula by branching out into a new genre, but Sinead says that she feels there’s a need to shake things up every decade or so. “I felt that things were going well in my adult writing, but I just wanted to do something else.

“I can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying writing for kids. I didn’t think it would be so joyful, I love getting kids’ reactions, they’re so honest, they’re so open and they’re so willing to be compassionate and kind.” It has also given her the opportunity to involve her own children in her work. They read The Truth About Riley and The New Girl at an early stage and were very happy to share their thoughts with their mother. Although the feedback was “blunt”, according to Sinead, she says that “it was one of the nicest things that happened with the two kids books”. She has three children with her husband Troy, the son of Bill Cullen and Jackie Lavin.

At 16 and 17 years of age, her boys Geordy and Hugo are older than Sinead’s target audience of eight to 14 but, along with her 13-year-old daughter Amy, they gave very good advice.

“They’re very honest about what they think works and doesn’t work. Most of the time I agree with them.” Her children were there when she was doing the research for The Truth About Riley during Covid. Although used to working from home, Sinead found it a challenge.

“I relish the quiet of having the house to myself. Having people constantly tell me that they were hungry and the wifi was crap and they needed to use my printer drove me absolutely mental but, bizarrely, in the midst of all that, I actually wrote a lot.”

Writing has always been cathartic for Sinead. She was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis several years ago and she wrote her novel The Good Mother when she was “in a lot of pain and really struggling to get my head around it and in a way I think it’s probably the best book I’ve written. I was very raw. I felt as if my skin had been peeled off when I wrote that book. I was really struggling but it made for a very powerful book. Writing saved me, definitely.

“I always say to kids, ‘If you’re worried about something, write it down, you can always rip it up and throw it in the bin, no one ever has to read it’.” It’s advice she echoes for budding writers. “You just have no idea what’s inside you until you pick up a pen or sit at your laptop and start writing. Sometimes people find it hard to express themselves in the spoken word, yet there’s something about the process of putting your thoughts down on to a page that clarifies what you’re trying to say or switches on the creativity within you.”

Sinead, who has a letter the late Maeve Binchy sent to her pinned up on her office, has found great support herself in the circle of Irish female writers. “I think women in general are very supportive of each other. When I rocked up 20 years ago, I was so welcomed and I hope that’s everybody’s experience. I think therefore we feel as we go on that it’s very important to pay it forward. As Cathy Kelly said to me, ‘The more successful an Irish writer is, the more people will seek out Irish writers’, so it’s to the benefit of all of us that we succeed. So why wouldn’t we champion each other?” A prolific author, Sinead’s debut novel The Baby Trail about fertility issues was published in 2004. The Truth About Riley is actually her second book to be launched this year. Already a bestseller, Yours, Mine, Ours is an adult drama about a blended family.

The two genres are very separate to Sinead, who says she feels like a different person when writing them. “It’s been a bananas few years but I did a lot of heavy lifting in Covid for all of these works so I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep up quite the pace but it’s working and I’m enjoying it, so it’s just head down and keep going. I’m loving the two worlds and I’m hoping — fingers crossed — to straddle those two worlds for as long as I can.” ·

• The Truth About Riley by Sinead Moriarty is published on September 15

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