Author Michelle McDonagh: 'I pulled down the window and said I'm looking for a good place to bury a body'

The bestselling author of There’s Something I Have to Tell You talks about her toxic family dramas, her addiction to true crime, and her invisible struggle with chronic pain

Author Michelle McDonagh pictured on the grounds of Blarney Woolen Mills in Cork. Picture: Chani Anderson

EARS prick as Cork-based author Michelle McDonagh tells me the story of researching Somebody Knows, her latest novel.

“I was driving up a bog road in my jeep. This guy was standing there footing turf. I pulled down the window and said; I’m looking for a good place to bury a body.’

“Cool as a breeze, he leans in…well, he nearly drew me a map. As I was driving off, I said; ‘By the way, I have my husband’s body in the back.’”

On a balmy day on the north side of Cork, I meet the novelist in Blarney Woollen Mills, where Michelle’s grandfather-in-law Christy Kelleher transformed the mill from a small souvenir shop to an institution.

It’s been just two weeks since Michelle had her right ovary and her fallopian tubes removed but a few minutes in her company makes it easy to forget that she is in chronic pain.

“I got a pain in my side about six years ago. Since then I’ve had every scan, every test — nothing is showing up. I’ve had my appendix out, I’ve had Botox in my stomach.

“Doctors think it might be this Central Sensitisation Syndrome. It’s where your brain sends faulty alarm signals telling you there is pain when there’s no reason for it.”

As far as emotional tear-jerkers —books, radio shows — they’re off limits.

“I am so ridiculously sensitive. I can’t listen to Joe Duffy even though he’s great. I mean, I cry at ads. My god, the new Black Beauty? I was watching it with my daughter and I was in floods of tears.”

Yet this is a woman who writes about death in her first and second novels — and negotiates the darkness with ease.

“I could be sitting there talking to Margaret Bolster (assistant State pathologist) and she’s telling me; ‘Don’t bury the body too deep because you don’t want the insects to get at it’ and that’s just like a normal conversation to me.”

While it may not outwardly upset Michelle, has any of that death and decay seeped into her subconscious, I wonder?

“I had a terrifying experience recently. I went into hospital a few weeks ago for this infusion of ketamine and lidocaine and I started tripping off my face. I was convinced the police were going to come in and arrest all the drug dealers who were dressed up as doctors and nurses. One minute I’d be feeling lovely and floaty, the next minute I was going down into my own grave.”

Michelle’s first novel There’s Something I Have to Tell You drew widespread acclaim with fans including bestselling author Sheila Flanagan and breakthrough writer, Jeanine Cummins, who penned American Dirt. 

However, her second book, Somebody Knows is the book she had always wanted to write.

“The idea for the second one was actually there before I did the first one. It was, if you’re adopted and you find out something about your adopted family. Imagine if your mother was a Traveller — how would you blend back into that family? What if you found out that your mother was murdered?”

Michelle McDonagh: "I am so ridiculously sensitive. I can’t listen to Joe Duffy even though he’s great." Picture Chani Anderson

The landscape acts as another character in the book.

“Setting is always a huge part for me. It comes first and it was always going to be set in Galway. I wanted it to be in Salthill and Connemara, places that I know and love myself.”

After living in Cork since 2008, do her Leeside friends not campaign for a book set in Cork?

“There’s a reference to Cillian Murphy in this one but the third book is set in Cork.”

Interspersed in the narrative of her new book is how poorly unmarried mothers were treated in Ireland and the story of Ann Lovett has always haunted Michelle’s mind.

“I was 12 when Ann Lovett died. I didn’t really know the full story, but I knew something bad had happened.”

Distinct memories of her granny listening to the radio are still fresh for Michelle.

“Gay Byrne would be reading out letters from all over the country about how all these girls got themselves ‘into trouble.’ She [Lovett] was very much in my mind and how her sister had taken her own life three months after she died.”

Without giving any spoilers, this novel highlights the hypocrisy shown towards women with regards adoption, abortion, and pregnancy.

“It’s not anti-Catholic or anti-Christian but I had in my mind those fervent Christians.”

An excerpt from Paula Meehan’s poem The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks sets the tone at the start of the book.

“That was never to be part of it. It’s this beautiful poem about the [Ann Lovett] tragedy. But it came into it and I was lucky to be able to use it.”

Even though she didn’t set out to write a book about women’s rights, the f-word is very much on my mind as I’m turning the pages of this book.

That wasn’t a conscious decision, Michelle says.

“It started really as just a dark family drama. But there’s stuff that you’ve absorbed yourself and you don’t even know it’s there, like reproductive rights.”

Michelle McDonagh: "I could never write anything where a child or an animal was harmed, especially a dog." Picture: Chani Anderson

Initially, Michelle toyed around with the idea of making her protagonist pregnant.

“She was going to be older. I was thinking about women who go for an abortion and they’re told to have to wait three days and those three days could push them over and they have to fly to England.”

Should this book have tied up the storyline neatly, it could have been placed in a very different genre on the shelves and perhaps a more commercial one.

But Michelle wanted this novel to reflect reality.

“I loved writing Lucia even though some of her scenes were so sad but she did have some happiness, in Connemara with the horse.”

In her career as a journalist, Michelle has over 20 years of experience covering health issues and court cases. 

She has a strong continence but one case got under her skin.

“Certain bits really stick with you. I covered an inquest years ago, with a woman who suffered post-partum psychosis and drowned her child. I will never forget it.”

Another interview resonated on several levels.

“I interviewed a mother who had her 10-year-old child on suicide watch. And no help. It’s shocking.”

Covering the health system for years, Michelle has not seen much positive change.

“I’m writing about health since I became a journalist in 1994 and things are getting worse, especially in mental health.”

There are two things that are strictly off-limits for the author as she works on her third book.

“I could never write anything where a child or an animal was harmed, especially a dog.”

• Somebody Knows by Michelle McDonagh is published in trade paperback by Hachette Books Ireland, £14.99