Beginner’s Pluck: Ellen McWilliams' 'Resting Place' is a remarkable book

The author was brought up in Bandon, among neighbours whose families were affected by the Dunmanway massacre of 1922, when 13 protestants were killed

Ellen McWilliams is the author of 'Resting Place: On wounds, War, and the Irish Revolution'.

Ellen was a very quiet child, who loved reading.

“I was always interested in other people,” she says. “I’m a good listener.”

As a student, she worked as a childminder in Austria and Germany, and for the Tourist Information office in Cork.

“After my primary degree, I’d expected to take a H Dip, and to become an English and History teacher, but instead I stayed in academia. I’ve always loved research, and unearthing history.”

She studied in Canada; taught at the University of Bristol and Bath Spa University and spent time as a Fulbright scholar at Fordham University in New York.

She has written three academic books.

Who is Ellen McWilliams?

Date/place birth: 1977/ Co Cork

Education: Sacred Heart Secondary School, Clonakilty; University College, Cork, English and History. And MA; University of Bristol, PhD in Margaret Atwood, and the Writing of Canadian women.

Home: Bristol.

Family: Husband, John, and son.

The day job: Senior lecturer at the University of Exeter in the Department of English.

In another life: “I’d have been a secondary school teacher, in history and English. I was working towards it.”

Favourite writers: Jennifer Johnston; William Trevor, Edna O’Brien, Toni Morrison; Jamaica Kincaid; Maeve Brennan.

Second book: “I’m finishing a novel about the ruins of a big house, and its place in the imagination of children in the 1980s.”

Top tip: “If you give it time, the story will find you, but be prepared for it to break your heart.”

Website: www.ellenmcwilliams.com.

X: @EllenMackers

The debut

Resting Place: On wounds, War, and the Irish Revolution

Beyond the Pale Books, €17.36

Ellen was brought up in Bandon, among neighbours whose families were affected by the Dunmanway massacre of 1922, when 13 protestants were killed.

In a project lasting two decades, Ellen spoke to the families she had grown up with, telling their stories, and the way such neighbourly murder unavoidably haunts the present. She weaves in her own story and her family’s history and shows deep compassion for everyone she represents.

“I never expected to write anything so personal,” she says. “But brought up in such close proximity to the massacre, I felt the story deserved the first person.”

The verdict: A remarkable book; brave, eloquent, empathetic and eminently readable.