Beginner’s Pluck: Author of 'The Coast Road' Alan Murrin

Outstanding novel, set in a coastal village in 1994, deals with difficult marriages on the cusp of the divorce referendum

Alan Murrin: 'It took four years to finish the book.'

THE youngest of five children, Alan always knew he wanted to be a writer.

“I was a precocious kid,” he says. “I read Roald Dahl, and thought, ‘I could do that!’” He wrote stories, continuing the things he watched on television, but at 9 or 10, music took over.