Book Interview: Donal Ryan - the boy born to be a writer

Donal Ryan is acknowledged as one of the finest prose stylists at work today, recognised with a slew of prizes at home and beyond. Picture: Moya Nolan

• The Queen of Dirt Island
• Donal Ryan 
• Doubleday, €14.99

All of Donal Ryan’s books pack an emotional punch, and his latest, The Queen of Dirt Island, is no different. When I tell him that the ending had me bawling on a beach in Kerry, he chuckles in recognition.

“We were in Kerry once and my wife, Anne Marie, saw a lady reading one of my books on the beach and she was like, ‘go over to her’ and I said ‘I can’t go over to her, I’ll freak the poor woman out’.”

As I chat to him in a hotel lobby ahead of a reading in Cork, I’m struck by how someone with such an extraordinary gift can be so ordinary, in the best sense of the word. And while our conversation is underscored by humility and gratitude, there is also a quiet certainty of his gift.

Ryan, who lives in Limerick with his wife and two teenage children, is acknowledged as one of the finest prose stylists at work today. His talent has been recognised with a slew of prizes at home and beyond — he was awarded the EU Prize for Literature for The Spinning Heart in 2014, while last year, he became the first Irish writer to be awarded the prestigious Prix Jean Monnet for European Literature, for his novel From a Low and Quiet Sea.

Growing up in Nenagh, Co Tipperary, Ryan knew that he had what it took to be a writer. He also got plenty of encouragement at home and in school.

“I was so lucky as a child, I got it everywhere, I was like one of those American kids who was told ‘you’re great’ all the time.

“I remember I’d be in bed reading and I would call out a word to my mum. She’d say what it was and then she would tell me what it meant. We were just a normal working-class family, it wasn’t like we were especially privileged. I went to the library and my parents bought books in job lots from jumble sales and house auctions. And then in primary school, and secondary school, I was always encouraged.

“I was a bit of a messer and a dosser, but I was very lucky to have really great teachers. The cards just fell right for me in school, they really did.”

The moment of epiphany regarding his writing came from an unlikely source.

“I always knew I should write, but the first time I felt the power of it, it was 1986. Barry McGuigan had lost his featherweight title to Steve Cruz, and he was my hero. I just loved him so much and I was inconsolable.

“I wrote a story about him winning it back and the fight was in Ireland, in Nenagh, in McDonagh Park and my family were all there. And Barry’s dad was there and he sang ‘Danny Boy’. I remember that feeling of joy, and the relief of it, that I had righted this wrong in a story.

“And I kind of knew then that there was a power in this, a power in making stuff up, in making things seem real with words.”

The Queen of Dirt Island, Ryan’s sixth novel, is set just outside Nenagh and centres on four generations of fierce and formidable Aylward women — Mary, Eileen, Saoirse, and Pearl. Ryan says the characters were inspired by the women in his own life.

“The idea of the house full of women was just fully formed in my imagination. And of course, my mother’s voice, my grandmother’s voice and my sister’s and my wife’s — the characters are composites of these strong women in my life.”

Among his many awards, Donal Ryan won the Novel of the Year Award at the An Post Irish Book Awards 2020.

The character of Eileen Aylward is particularly memorable — left widowed after a tragic accident, she goes to great lengths to protect her daughter and her own legacy as the ‘queen’ of the title. Ryan says the character shares many similarities with his own mother, although he gets a great kick out of the fact that she could not see it.

“My mum read the first manuscript, it was just a pile of pages, and she says to me ‘that’s very good, Donal, but where did you get that one Eileen from?’. She couldn’t see herself at all but it’s basically her,” he says.

How our lives are controlled by fate or otherwise is a theme explored in the novel, and there was a similar element of destiny in its conception, says Ryan.

“When I started writing this novel, I had just finished a much longer novel that just didn’t work out. So in a kind of a panic, I started The Queen of Dirt Island.

“Literally it felt as though the universe whispered the whole novel to me, it was just so easy. It was 12 weeks of absolute pure writing joy.

“The words just kind of fell into place. It was great, the process wasn’t arduous at all and I was just so grateful.”

As a lecturer in creative writing in the University of Limerick, Ryan is well aware of the discussions around cultural appropriation — and the fact that writing from the perspective of women could be viewed as problematic by some.

However, he’s clear that the raison d’être of writing is to inhabit other characters.

“My friend and colleague Kit de Waal wrote a great article for The Guardian about this.

“She said, it’s important never to dip your pen in somebody else’s blood. And so I think if you’re respectful, and if you do your research, and get your voices right, and you don’t engage in stereotypes or clichés and you never ever have the right to harm anybody, you can write any story you want, you can be anybody you want, because actually fiction is to a large degree, the act of appropriating somebody else’s experience and making a story out of it.

“What else are we going to do? I mean, if I stayed in my lane, as people say, I’d be writing stories about a middle-aged man who’s married with two kids, living in a three-bed semi in a housing estate in Limerick, working in a university and coaching the soccer team. And that’s it, there’s nothing else, that’s my whole life. So I mean, I’d be hard-pressed to find too much fertile ground there narratively.”

Ryan says he loves teaching and has found the process works both ways, informing his own work.

“We spend so much time in our day talking about craft and rigour and all these things. I suppose I had to apply those to my own writing because I was writing from the seat of my pants for a good few years. I had read a lot but I hadn’t really thought too much about the craft element.”

When I ask how much of being a good writer is innate, he ponders for a while.

“Yeah, I wonder. All you can do as a so-called teacher of creative writing is make the situation for the individual person as amenable as possible, to help them be the best writer they can be.

“With engineering and maths and stuff, there’s a set of algorithms and rules. But there is kind of an inverted relationship when it comes to creative writing because you have to reconfigure your approach for every single student.

“Every person is different, their style is different, their voice is different, you have to become attuned to each individual writer. So it can be very involved but I really love it.”