Author interview: ‘If I can ever help anybody the way Maeve Binchy helped me, I will’

The message from Patricia Scanlan's new book, 'City Girls Forever',  is to make the most of your friends

Patricia Scanlan founded the Open Book series of novels to promote adult literacy. File picture: Anthony Woods

• City Girls Forever
• Patricia Scanlan
• Simon and Schuster, €14.99/ Kindle, €15.50

It’s 35 years since Patricia Scanlan’s debut, City Girl, hit the shelves, introducing the lives of Dublin friends Maggie, Caroline, and Devlin. 

And to mark the occasion, the author has written a new book that brings the lives of the friends up to date. How did she get the idea?

“In 2020, I listened to a podcast, Book Birds, from Ciara Geraghty and Caroline Grace Cassidy, who were discussing City Girl.

“It had made such an impact on them. I thought, the characters will be in menopause now.

“They’ve been through so much and so much has changed in the world. I think I’ll bring them up to date.

“The moment I sat down to write them it was as if they were my best friends, I’d not seen in a while, and we were having a lady’s night out. I was entertaining myself as well as my readers.”

Back in 1990s Ireland, City Girl caused quite a stir. It was the first commercial book to tell of contemporary Irish women, and readers lapped it up.

I remember my publishers were only going to print 5,000 copies, and I was absolutely horrified.

“I moaned and whinged so much that they printed 12,000 copies, and it sold out the week it hit the shelves.”

With success, though, came a whole heap of begrudgery.

“The literary snobbery was hilarious,” she says. And it wasn’t just that it acquired that derivative term, chick lit. 

“Someone called it ‘Shitty Girls’,” says Scanlan, breaking into laughter. For a while, Scanlan stood alone.

“Poolbeg said I should write a book a year, and I said ‘I’m a bit tired. Shouldn’t you be looking at other writers?’.”

And, eventually, they did. Marian Keyes followed five years after Scanlan, with Sheila O’Flanagan and Cathy Kelly making up a dynamic foursome.

“I loved being the first of that wave,” says Scanlan, explaining what good friends the four of them are.

We know the work that goes into it, and we have such laughs.

Since then, the market has been flooded with talented women writers, but she’s glad she’s not starting out today, when you’re thought of as a commodity, and your book as a unit.

“Back then, publishing was all about the book. Your book was valued, and publishers didn’t have to pay for promotions the way they do now.

“Everyone got a chance if the writing was good and you told a good story. Today, it’s all about genre.”

City Girls Forever opens during the pandemic, and takes the three friends up to March 2025. 

It shows the Wicklow-based Maggie dealing with her truculent elderly mother, whose care has been dumped on her because, as a writer, her family believe she “doesn’t really work”.

“Oh my God,” says Scanlan. “Those words flew onto the page. People think they can call, or ring anytime of the day when you’re writing.”

She’s closest in temperament to Maggie — but gives Devlin the endometriosis she suffered with, pain- fully, for decades. 

It ties in neatly with a plot taking a doctor to task who abused her in that first book; and when Caroline falls while she’s running, Scanlan uses her own experience of tearing her rotator cuff and needing surgery.

The original City Girl mentioned many Dublin streets, bars, and shops; it was part of its appeal for Dubliners fed up with novels set in London or New York, and she’s done this again. 

Much of the action happens in County Wicklow — Scanlan lives on the edge of a field there every summer; a place she describes as balm to her soul; she’s namechecked a local boutique, and a favourite coffee shop. 

There’s also a glorious scene on Brittas Bay, where Maggie swims in moonlight.

Scanlan never plans a book: “I never write a synopsis,” she says. 

“I tried to once, but when I wrote the book it was completely different. I have a sort of path, like a painting. You have the broad wash. And then you start filling in the details.” 

She often gets taken by surprise: “I didn’t know about Nurse Maguire,” she says, mentioning a character from City Girl whose story is updated. 

Then she made an appearance, and I realised she’d had a child, and that made me excited all over again. That’s what keeps the books fresh.

She hates starting a book, and 25 novels on, that’s never got any easier.

“Starting is a bit like being at a wedding you don’t want to be at,” she says. 

“You’re sitting at a table with strangers you don’t want to know, then you get to know them and their lives become really interesting. Then you can’t get enough of them.

“The writing starts slowly, then there’s this unknown moment when instead of you pushing the story, its pushing you down the hill.

“That’s exhilarating. You don’t want to be disturbed by anybody. When I was in my prime, I would write for 14 hours a day coming up to the end of the book.”

Since the very start of her career, Scanlan has been a great friend and support to other writers. And this, she says, is down to an encounter she once had with Maeve Binchy.

“Back when I was a library assistant, I took an afternoon off and went to see Maeve give a talk to a small writing group.

Choosing an agent like choosing a husband  

“She was amazing. I knew City Girl was going to be published, and I went up to her and told her, and she said: ‘That’s wonderful news! Do you have an agent?’ I said I didn’t and she said: ‘We’ll have to get you one. Choosing an agent is like choosing a husband — difficult and individual.’ 

“She gave me the name of three agents, including her own.

“I came out of there thinking, if I do well when I’m published, if I can ever help anybody the way Maeve helped me, I will. I made that promise, and it’s always a joy to give someone a little lift.”

Many years later, a man went up to her in a library, and said he was in a literacy group. And he was mortified because there were no books for him to read that weren’t aimed at small children.

“One of the volunteers said that I should write a book for new readers like him, so I did.” 

Then, realising how great the need was, she spearheaded New Island’s Open Book series. 

She wrote more books and chivvied other authors to contribute. Her collaboration with the publisher has continued; New Island are bringing out anniversary editions of the City Girl Trilogy: City Girl, City Woman, and City Lives.

City Girls Forever is her first book in five years. The last one, The Liberation of Bridget Dunne was due to be launched in March 2020.

“Covid shut poor Bridget down,” she says. “The day before the launch we had to cancel because Easons was closing. All bookshops were closing.”

Looking forward to her current launch, Scanlan has yet to start a new book. 

She planned to in the New Year, but on Friday, December 13, she got some devastating news. She has breast cancer, and since her diagnosis has been through three surgeries.

“Hopefully the third was the last,” she says, “and I can now have a course of radiation.”

She’s still recovering, and our interview is conducted by phone. But for all that she’s bewildered by her diagnosis; says she hasn’t time for it, and feels that her brain is in a fog, she’s remarkably upbeat; our conversation is full of laughter, and Scanlan’s overwhelming positivity.

The message from the book, she says, is to make the most of your friends.

“Enjoy them and have as much fun with them as you can. They are the ones who hold you up.”