Cork World Book Fest review: Enjoyable evening with Sophie White and Sara Baume
Eimear Ryan and Sara Baume at the Cork World Book Fest readings at Cork City Library. Picture: David Creedon
One of the highlights of the Cork World Book Festival calendar was a conversation with Sophie White and Sara Baume on Thursday evening, which offered entertaining and insightful anecdotes about their recent novels and writing processes. Their conversation with Eimear Ryan at Cork City Library drew a large crowd.
White discussed her latest work, literary novel Where I End, citing Inis Meain as a “huge inspiration” for the unnamed island at the centre of her tale. She says the mother-daughter relationship in particular was one she was keen to explore.
“I was very interested just in that journey that love can take into darkness,” she says.
The role of the carer is at the heart of Where I End, and White says she felt it important to portray that and the “very natural resentment” that can grow between a young carer and a parent they never knew well enough to love.
“It's actually really personal for me, where that whole idea began to spark was because my father got Alzheimer's in his early 50s and he spent the last year of his life completely silent, didn't make eye contact,” she says.
“Anyone who has been there knows you really are in a state of vigil for years before this person even dies. It really got me thinking about how much the history of love between us sustains that vigil. And I got so obsessed with the idea of what if you have to perform this vigil for years on end, but you would never have that history of love and what kind of person would that produce?”
Baume discussed her sparse use of dialogue in her novels, stating she uses as little as possible to avoid offensive portrayals of Irishness. She was born in Lancashire before moving to Cork as a child and says she “can't do voices” unless they are drawn from real conversations.
“I’ve been thinking about Irishness and Britishness and how something I've always been afraid of as someone who came from a semi-British family, but grew up entirely here is I've always been wary of dialogue because I don't want to make my characters speak like.” Baume says an eco-consciousness is present in her novel Seven Steeples, in which a couple withdraws from society and lives in the natural world.
“It's something people don't ask about much but I feel like it's probably my biggest theme. I think everywhere in this novel is this awareness that nature is dying, that it only has a certain amount of time, and that we should pay attention to it while it's there.
“It’s my only political statement, in a way, but it’s the one that means the most to me.”
Cork World Book Festival continues over the weekend, with upcoming events including a panel discussion on Irish crime writing, novelist Joseph O'Connor in conversation with writer Mary Morrissy and a book market on Grand Parade.
- Cork World Book Fest continues until Sunday, April 23; see https://corkworldbookfest.com
