Culture That Made Me: Cork-based author Catherine Kirwan on Corcadorca, Columbo and Little Women
Catherine Kirwan's latest novel, The Seventh Body, is published this week.
Catherine Kirwan grew up on a farm in Fews, Co Waterford. She studied law at University College Cork, where one of her crime novels, A Lesson in Malice, is set. She published her first novel, Darkest Truth, in 2019. She served as a board member of Corcadorca Theatre Company for many years. Her latest novel, The Seventh Body, will be launched, 6.30pm, Wednesday at Waterstones, Cork, all welcome.
As a child, I read a thousand times. I remember being surprised by the anti-Irish prejudice in the book, but I still loved it. When I was 18, I was in Boston and made a pilgrimage to Concord, Massachusetts, which is where Louisa May Alcott’s books were set in Orchard House, which is a historic house museum. I loved the film adaptation recently with Saoirse Ronan. We all went to the cinema to see it as a family. I’m a Little Women super nerd!
In my teens, I was hugely influenced by Nell McCafferty. I remember reading , a collection of her columns, published in 1984. At the time, she was often on the Late Late Show and other shows and the radio. It wasn’t just her writings, but also how she was. It was her way of being in the world. She was a voice for the oppressed, for women, for the forgotten. She was also this free spirit who said whatever she wanted to and didn't care about the consequences. She was a role model for so many women of my generation.
I was about 20 when I read Margaret Atwood’s . It felt very familiar to me as a young woman growing up in Ireland. It didn't seem that far-fetched, the dystopian misogyny of it. Famously, Atwood said she didn’t put in anything that wasn't true, that hadn't happened somewhere. It’s a superb work of literature.
I'm especially drawn to Dennis Lehane from Boston. is one of my favourite books. Small Mercies was my book of the year in 2023. It’s about Boston Irish America and racism, set in the ’70s when there was race riots in Boston. It struck a chord with me. It's a book every Irish person should read, especially in light of the rise of the far right in Ireland – to see what bigotry and hatred can do to a community. It’s brilliantly written, but it's still a crime novel – it’s not preachy in any way.
by Gillian Flynn broke open a new approach to fiction. It was published in 2012. She's a fantastic prose stylist. Her writing, her characters, her approach is superb. Then she drops this mind-blowing twist in the middle of the book that knocks you for six. A lot of people give out about its lead female character because she's so evil, but to me it’s a feminist book. The cool girl speech she gives is iconic.
Missing Persons, Or My Grandmother's Secrets
by Clair Wills is a fantastic book. It’s short, but it contains multitudes. It's beautifully written, beautifully structured. It’s set in West Cork – in a triangle between Skibbereen, Ballydehob and Bantry. It goes back into that old Ireland and the life women had, what we put up with as a society, and what we were complicit in as a society as well.
I always loved . Peter Falk in the lead was incredible. There’s a new episode-of-the-week TV show called , starring Natasha Lyonne, that replicates the format of – the audience knows who the murderer is from the start, like in . You're waiting for the downfall then.
It’s fiendishly complicated like . In Columbo, it was invariably clever, high-status murderers brought low in the end because this dumb, weird, annoying investigator catches them out. I like both those shows.
I remember seeing at the Cork Film Festival in the mid 1990s. It blew my socks off. It was amazing. Juliette Binoche plays a woman whose husband and child are killed in a car accident. I remember buying the soundtrack for it as well, which was by a Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner. Buying a film’s soundtrack was a thing people did in the ’90s! I adored that film.
I'm a sucker for a good biopic. I loved the Baz Luhrmann one. I loved the ending, the loss, the tragedy of him. I went to see it with a friend. We saw it at the Gate Cinema in Cork. After leaving the cinema, we were walking, going to the Raven Bar. As we got to the pub’s door, she turned to me and said, “You have to stop crying now. We’re going into the pub.”
I could call out any number of Corcadorca plays. in Sir Henry’s in the mid ’90s was a fantastic show. I was at the opening night of with Cillian Murphy and Eileen Walsh (who, incidentally, is the audiobook narrator on my first three books).
Their production of Carol Churchill’s on Spike Island is an extraordinary memory, going over on the boat to see it. in Fitzgerald's Park was so popular there were people climbing over the railings to get in to see Shakespeare. The buzz around that show was extraordinary.
I remember going to the Liss Ard festivals down in Liss Ard, close to Skibbereen, in the late ’90s. I was a big Ron Sexsmith fan. I recall seeing him play the Liss Ard festivals. I have a vivid memory of seeing Nick Cave in a tent in Liss Ard playing Red Right Hand, which, of course, went on to be the theme tune for , starring Cillian Murphy. It feels like the world is a very small place sometimes.
by Tom Murphy is possibly my favourite play of all time. There was a production in the Peacock in Dublin in 2022. Seán McGinley played Dada. To me, it's the defining portrayal of Dada. There will never be a better one. He was outstanding. Other productions I've seen, the character of Dada is too big. McGinley caught the meanness of the character so brilliantly. He’s a fantastic actor. It was unforgettable.
I went to the 50th anniversary screening of at the Cork Film Festival last autumn. I was in the front row for it. It's not that I'm such a Rory Gallagher fan, but I thought it would be a good one to see on the big screen. Of course, I admire Rory Gallagher. Do I know his music all that well? I don't, but the film is so good. As a portrait of an artist, it’s amazing. It’s so immediate. I found myself in tears watching it, which I guess is bound up with the fact he died too young, the tragedy that often goes with being a great artist.
