Book interview: Megan Nolan on discovering one of Waterford's best-known authors 

‘The Fly on the Wheel’ features an introduction by author Megan Nolan and a striking cover from well-known illustrator Fatti Burke

• The Fly on the Wheel
• Katherine Cecil Thurston
• Manderley Press, £18.99
• manderleypress.com

At the turn of the last century, Katherine Cecil Thurston was one of Ireland’s best-known authors, celebrated from London to New York. 

Her novels were serialised in well-known magazines and adapted for the stage and film but after the Cork-born author died at the age of 36 in mysterious circumstances, her name and her achievements quickly faded from the public imagination.

Now her work is being rescued from the past with the publication of a new edition of one of her most successful novels, The Fly on the Wheel, which features an introduction by author Megan Nolan and a striking cover from well-known illustrator Fatti Burke.

It is a serendipitous coalescence of creative talent — Nolan and Burke are friends who grew up together in Waterford city, where The Fly on the Wheel is set, while the book was written in Thurston’s holiday home in the county’s seaside town of Ardmore. 

It is a gripping story with a compelling heroine at its centre — the beautiful, daring but socially disadvantaged Isabel Costello who becomes romantically entangled with Stephen Carey, a married solicitor. The book became an instant bestseller when it was published in 1908.

Nolan’s involvement came about when she was contacted by Rebeka Russell of Manderley Press, which aims to reintroduce forgotten works to a new audience. Russell had tracked down an old copy of The Fly on the Wheel online, and knowing of Nolan’s connection to Waterford, asked if she would be interested in reading it. 

Thurston’s existence, and the book, was a revelation to Nolan.

“I had never come across her at all. I was kind of surprised as I would have assumed that I would have known about a woman novelist in Waterford,” she says.

Nolan loved the book and connected with it immediately. 

While she delighted in the geographical familiarities, she found its treatment of class and societal mores particularly enlightening, reflecting a very different side of the city in which she grew up.

“The book is so entrenched in class stuff and that just wasn’t part of my life in Waterford. I didn’t know anyone rich … everyone seemed to be more or less the same. I was very taken by that. 

"I also remember taking a picture of the first page, because it mentions Lady Lane [where Stephen Carey lives with his family] and describes it. It was quite exciting to see those little bits of Waterford in an actual novel.”

Waterford-born author Megan Nolan was surprised and delighted to discover the work of Katherine Cecil Thurston — an author who was entirely new to her. Picture: Sophie Davidson

Nolan’s acclaimed debut novel Acts of Desperation, published last year, was very much contemporary in outlook but there are also resonances with The Fly on the Wheel, especially in terms of how women lose agency in romantic relationships.

“Something that I really connected with was the way that Isabel doesn’t really have a personhood beyond who she is able to partner with.

“She goes beyond that with how strong her personality is but ultimately, she can’t go beyond it in a material way and transcend those rigid boundaries of society. 

"I relate to that because when I was a lot younger, I did still have that feeling of, ‘I will only be who I’m meant to be or the best version of myself if I find somebody’ … a boyfriend who treats me in a certain way or thinks in a certain way.

“I have been able to come out of that mindset but it is still prevalent — to configure your life as a woman is to sometimes strategically decide who is going to make you the best offer in terms of how comfortable or happy your life may turn out.”

Nolan grew up steeped in the arts; her father Jim is a well-known playwright and an instrumental figure in Waterford’s theatrical scene. 

She says that growing up, she would have liked to have read a book set in her home place.

“I think it is actually the first novel I have ever read set in Waterford. I found it quite moving to read it for that reason — that it gives respect to Waterford. 

"It’s not like when I was growing up that I consciously thought, ‘oh, I’d like to read a book set in Waterford,’ but you are reading other people’s stuff set in other places, and going, ‘oh, I wish I lived there,’ just because you are able to read an account of it that is quite compelling. 

"I remember in one of my dad’s plays, The Red Iron, there is a part where a character recites the names of the streets he grew up on. Even just hearing it like that is really meaningful.”

There would appear to be many similarities between Thurston — who was born Katherine Madden and raised in a traditional Victorian family in Blackrock, Cork — and the character of Isabel, a fierce and intelligent woman who believes a relationship should be ruled by the heart rather than the head.

“In Isabel, there is that unwillingness to accept the world she was born into and how people tell her the way things must remain. I think it wouldn’t be a stretch to read that stubbornness and wilfulness [in Thurston].

Waterford's Fatti Burke designed the cover 

“Isabel is such a great character, I love her so much. It is so much fun to read somebody who is that stubborn and determined to get what she wants. 

"Even from our point of view, it is quite shocking to witness a woman being like ‘no, I want him actually and I don’t care what the circumstances are’. 

"It is brave to portray that total disregard for the institution of marriage,” says Nolan.

It would seem that unlike Isabel, however, Thurston achieved success very much on her own terms before her tragic end, which reads like a plot from one of her novels. 

The author got divorced from her first husband, the writer Ernest Temple Thurston, who was said to be jealous of her success. 

She later became engaged to a doctor, who some suspected of being involved in her death after she changed her will in his favour. 

In September 1911, Thurston was found dead in a room in Moore’s Hotel in Cork. The cause of death was officially asphyxia — she had previously had epileptic fits — but there were rumours that she was killed by poison, in either a murder or a suicide.

“I don’t know how it was reported, obviously they could only be oblique about it but, it does sound pretty strongly like there was something nefarious at play,” says Nolan.

“She was quite a remarkable person which makes it even more crazy that I hadn’t come across her. She died so young, and it is possible that her name just dwindled away because there was no-one championing her work.”

Nolan says she is delighted that a new audience will get to read The Fly on the Wheel, which quite apart from its author’s fascinating story, stands on its own merits as a great read.

“I usually read modern fiction — sometimes when you start in with an older book, you have to get in the zone before you settle into it. But The Fly on the Wheel zips along and I was completely gripped by it,” she says. 

“I am also excited for people in Waterford to read it.”

Joining the ranks of books set in Waterford will be Nolan’s next novel, which will be released next year. 

She says the treatment of class in The Fly on the Wheel set her thinking about how she would like to explore the issue in her own work in the future.

“I do really like the way that Thurston portrays and brings to life all those subtle class dynamics and social intricacies — maybe in the future I would bring that sort of perspective into my work more.”

• A launch event featuring a discussion with Megan Nolan, illustrator Fatti Burke and publisher Rebeka Russell, will be held at the Waterford Gallery of Art on Oct 29 as part of the Imagine Arts festival. 
• See imagineartsfestival.com.