Culture That Made Me: Louise Kennedy on Toni Morrison, Top of the Pops and Call My Agent
Culture That Made Me: Louise Kennedy
Born in 1967, Louise Kennedy grew up in Holywood, Co Down. She spent nearly 30 years working as a chef before finding almost immediate success as a fiction writer. Her short story collection won the John McGahern Prize. Her debut novel , which won Novel of the Year at the An Post Book Awards, is published by Bloomsbury. She lives in Sligo and is married with two adult children.
Probably when I was about eight or nine, there was a book called by Nina Bawden. It was about a couple of children who were sent from London down the country as evacuees. There was a seemingly sinister, kind of witchy aul' one and a skull in it, things like that. I adored it. The BBC did an adaptation for TV, which I watched as well. It was total escapism.
Growing up, a woman who moved in a couple of doors down from us — who wasn't from Ireland — was a great reader. She lent me copy of Joan Didion’s . The first essay, which was written in the 1960s, is about water in California, which is still an issue. My favourite one was about her covering the Manson Family trial. She was sent out by one of the defence lawyers to buy a respectable outfit for Linda Kasabian to wear at the trial after she turned state witness. I never in my life had read anything like this. That changed everything for me.
The dancing song that I love most is 'Teardrops' by Womack & Womack. It's because it was on the radio a lot, and seemed to be played everywhere I went in the late summer of 1989 when I moved to London, I probably have associations from it. I absolutely love it.
When I was about 21, I bought Toni Morrison's . I didn't even know what I was picking up. I think if I had known I might have been afraid to read it. It’s one of the most important and totally disturbing books I've ever read.
It’s a horrendous story. It opens with a black woman who bashes her baby’s head off a wall to save her from a life in slavery. Then she's haunted by the child's ghost. There's so much going about race and intergenerational trauma. It's so beautifully written that you just have to keep going.
There's an American writer called Ellen Gilchrist. She's a very old woman now. She's from the South. She wrote short stories and novels. The same characters and the same families tend to appear throughout all of the books she wrote, which I love because you get to see them at various stages of their lives.
She’s really witty, smart, and insightful, and there’d be moments of shocking brutality in there as well. I love her. She’s a great writer.
Growing up, I probably watched every week. When repeats are now on BBC Four, I distinctly remember sitting in our living room and watching some of those acts before. The performance I remember most was after Bobby Sands died in 1981. The Undertones had a song called 'It's Going to Happen'. One of the boys had a black armband on. I remember how bizarre it was to be watching that because obviously he was a fellow from Derry who wanted to mark it in his own way.
Peter Powell introduced it just as this pop song. There were all these blissfully ignorant English people dancing around the place completely oblivious to the reference.
I love . It's about a talent agency in Paris. Every week there's a cameo appearance from a famous French actor. People like Juliette Binoche, Béatrice Dalle, Jean Reno. It’s beautiful looking obviously because it's set somewhere lovely in Paris. The characterisations are fantastic.
Everybody who works in the agency has their own dramas going on. They'd be trying to sort out something in their own lives, but then some very demanding diva-type person would turn up who needed shoes or something and they'd have to drop everything and run around with them. There’s also something moral about the show. You come away thinking maybe it isn't fantastic being famous.
There was something so desolate about the way was shot in black and white, and about how Marlon Brando's character did seem for a little while to have a wee bit of hope for him to be able to extricate himself from his circumstances, but then he just couldn’t. There was something very high-minded and moral about it as well, and great lines and it looks gorgeous. I really like it.
The last play I saw was in March 2020 in London. It was a production of Chekhov’s by Conor McPherson. It had the most incredible cast, including Toby Jones and Ciarán Hinds. I've never seen a set like it. It was as if the outside was growing in, so there were big, long, droopy branches and lots of greenery, almost growing in through the windows, and the walls were this dark grey-green. It had beautiful lighting and very simple costumes. It looked amazing and the performances were incredible. It seemed like an interpretation that was thinking about our relationship to the land. It was wonderful.
Like everybody else, I've gone through phases of listening to . It was very unexpected. I was talking to my sister about this and we were, like, “Who knew Vogue Williams was hilarious?” Because she's extremely funny.
When she starts talking to Joanne McNally about her husband, her children, and her life, she has the complete piss taken out of her. She takes it very well and gives as good as she gets. They are a very good foil for each other. Things like when they compare notes about shoplifting. The dynamic between the pair of them is completely hilarious.
Nowadays, I play an inordinate amount of Lucinda Williams. I've been doing that since my early 20s. Especially her first few albums, those really angsty songs. You can nearly see where she is in the States. You feel like you're in dive bars with her, driving in a car through somewhere pretty grim like Texas.
Her father was a poet. I think she was brought up with a lot of language and it shows in her lyrics as. She's great. I love her.
