Dream debut followed by a very tricky second delivery

Three years after the phenomenal success of her debut, 'Girl A', Abigail Dean's second novel, 'Day One', is about to be published

Abigail Dean’s first novel, ‘Girl A’, had a charmed arrival into the world so the brutal slog involved in delivering her second, ‘Day One’, while simultaneously caring for her new born child was quite overwhelming at times. Picture: Nicola Thompson Photography

• Day One
• Abigal Dean 
• Harper Collins, €16.99
• Kindle, €10.18

Abigail Dean is relieved. After three years of struggle, her second novel, Day One, is about to be published.

It’s a brilliant tale which hinges on the tragedy of a school shooting, and on the way the aftermath impacts the community. 

It’s a complex tale, and took a lot of rewriting, and that’s all a long way from the ease which saw the release of her debut, back in 2021.

Girl A, released in January 2021, caused a nine-way auction; was sold to 37 territories worldwide. was a Sunday Times, New York Times and Irish number one bestseller; is being made into a TV series, and has been called the debut of the decade. All of this, at the time, seemed surreal.

“It was absurd, what happened,” says Abigail, on Zoom from the home in London she shares with her husband, and two-year-old son.

“It was beyond my wildest dreams.”

She was in India and Singapore on a work trip with Google when her agent, Juliette Mushens, negotiated the auction.

I was in rural India with no phone signal. I didn’t sleep for days because it all seemed so improbable.

She laughs: “To stay sane, I had to get back to the original dream which was to finish a book and to get that book published.

“If you can go into a bookshop and see your book on a shelf, that is the pinnacle. Everything else is just a bonus.”

Abigail has always written, and always wanted to be a writer.

“I wrote fan fiction as a teenager, on my parent’s huge desktop before I went to school.”

Her first job, from 16, and in university holidays, was in Waterstones in her native Manchester. 

She adored chatting to the customers and sharing her favourite novels with them. But she stopped writing as an adult.

“I hadn’t the confidence anymore,” she says.

That, in one way, is strange, because Abigail is nothing if not an achiever. Studying English Literature at Cambridge University, she left with a double-first.

“Back then writing seemed like the pipe dream, and I had to grow up and get a sensible job,” she says. “And I needed to pay rent.”

I looked at the options and thought, if you are good with words, becoming a lawyer is a good idea.

She worked in London, in the City as a corporate lawyer, and loved the glamour, if not the commercial corporate side. 

After six years, she moved to Google as a lawyer, but first, took three months off to finally write.

“I had the idea for Girl A, about a big family living with trauma after a terrible event in their childhood, and I had already written a few thousand words.

“I had very grand illusions about completing the novel before I went back to work, and I spent six or seven hours five days a week in the library writing, but I only reached 40,000 words.

“It took me another nine months to finish it.”

She had a very generous advance, but she didn’t give up the day job.

“I’m a risk adverse lawyer,” she laughs, “And I was tentative about how well the book would do.”

Day One started with the idea of a conspiracy theory.

“I’m a cynical person, in that I don’t believe conspiracy theories. And there have been so many atrocities that are doubted by certain groups that I became fascinated.”

And the proliferation of those, and the high-profile tweets after the Manchester Arena bombing was something I could not understand.

“After every US Shooting there are high profile cases of people who went after the victim’s families. I posed the question, how does this happen?

“And how does it happen to so many people who are not the stereotype of people living in their basement wearing a uniform, but people that we know.”

In Day One, Trent is an ordinary guy, a loner, who yearns to be a journalist. When he reads that the shooter was a guy he knew and who was kind to him, he doesn’t believe the man capable of killing. 

His doubts might have stayed there, had he not met Susan, a stereotypical conspiracy theorist, and been further influenced by Ray, who spends his life gathering followers, for the sake, it seems, of power.

Trent shares the bulk of the narration with Marty, a confused teenager whose mother died in the shooting. 

Interviewed at the time, she said she was in the hall to witness the atrocity. But was she telling the truth? 

Doubting her, the conspiracy theorists target her in a quest to expose the shooting as a hoax. It’s a toxic mix.

Rewriting the first draft

Abigail finished a first draft of Day One, but was asked to do a complete rewrite.

That was hard with a full-time job to negotiate, as the complex structure needed refining, but being asked to write it a third time came as a serious blow. Particularly as, by then, baby Josh had arrived.

“These editor notes are very kindly phrased, but it was basically, rewrite the book. I remember crying, actually weeping when I got the second note.”

She set to writing when Josh was three months old, and kept trying until he was six months, by which time the deadline had long sailed by.

“Everything I produced was dreadful. And I would forget what was happening between chapters. While the baby slept, I was awake worrying about the book, and not getting it right.

“I needed my time and space to write, but I wanted to be with my baby, singing songs and watching bad TV.”

In despair, she requested an extra six months, and placed the baby in day care two months early, and everything clicked.

Almost from the first day, it started to work. I got the book under control.

That extra time was certainly worth it, because the finished product is everything a reader wants. 

From the first page the author makes us care about the characters, so that when their secrets are gradually revealed, we understand their actions, even if we don’t approve of them. 

And the main narrators, Marty and Trent are especially skilfully drawn.

Marty, a school star, with the popularity to match, becomes mired in a love affair with a manipulative controlling older boy. 

And there can’t surely, be many women who haven’t, at some stage in their lives, had a boyfriend they later regret.

“I have had that boyfriend,” says Abigail, “as have most women I know.

“The most brilliant women, and if he does something despicable, it can destroy your life through no fault of your own. Marty is just a frightened teenager.”

Abigail left Google in February 2023, and has written full-time since. And, she says, that has been a joy. 

She’s completed her third novel, which was a pleasure to write and, like the first, took just a year.

That is, perhaps, just as well. Because in June, life will be disrupted again, with the arrival of baby number two.

Meanwhile, her son is going through a sleepless stage, and she’s spending every night on a mattress in his room.

“It feels like it will never end,” she says. “You know it will, but I sometimes wonder, will I ever sleep in my bed again?”

It’s perhaps no surprise that one of her favourite current books, one she reads for inspiration before she writes, is Soldier Sailor, Claire Kilroy’s brilliant novel of the struggles of a first-time mum.

“Motherhood is a long slog,” she says. “It’s ultimately joyful, but it does have its moments of, how will we get through the next day?”