Author interview: ‘Rituals’ created by novelist’s collaboration with visual artist

Danielle McLaughlin chats about her new novel ‘Rituals’ with Marjorie Brennan, and describes the evolution of its central character, a middle-aged woman whose routine-driven life is steered in a new direction

Danielle McLaughlin: ‘I want to make something that leaves somebody with a little bit of hope or a sense that the world is a worthwhile place to be in. I hope readers will feel better about being in the world when they get to the end of the book.’ Picture: Ros Kavanagh

Most published writers will be familiar with the ‘sophomore slump’ where the the pressure to deliver on a successful debut can make the follow-up book a slog.

There were no such worries for Cork writer Danielle McLaughlin when it came to her second novel. 

It helped that she wasn’t alone in the process, after she embarked on a creative collaboration with artist Siobhán Rea, also a friend.

The result is Rituals, inspired by Rea’s decades-long daily practice of doing a drawing at the same time every morning. 

Over a period of three months early in 2023, Rea, originally from Mitchelstown, Co Cork, gave her sketches to McLaughlin, who used them as inspiration for the story of Joan, a middle-aged public servant whose routine-driven life is steered in a new direction after she is forced to take time off work and rents out a room in her house to a young college student.

“I had 90 drawings from those three months. There was a great kind of energy and the sense of a gift in that because all I had to do was decipher or excavate the story that these drawings were speaking to me,” says McLaughlin. 

“The arrangement was that I would hand her a first draft of a manuscript. So, while I was doing my rewriting, she was responding to my draft manuscript.

“There was a circular idea to the project and Siobhan went on to make more pieces of art based on the draft manuscript.”

McLaughlin, who lives with her family in Donoughmore, Co Cork, says it was a more enjoyable experience than writing her first novel, The Art of Falling, which was published during the pandemic and shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. 

She had previously published the acclaimed short story collection Dinosaurs on Other Planets in 2015.

“Writing Rituals was totally exhilarating. I wrote it faster and it was creatively more fun than my first two books as well.

“Some of the short stories were very dark, I think I had a much bleaker world view, I was in a different place in my head when I wrote that book.”

Memorable character drawn with insight and empathy

Joan is a memorable character, beautifully drawn with insight and empathy by McLaughlin. 

Joan takes comfort in her own daily rituals, most particularly in the talismanic token of a plastic rabbit which must be removed and replaced in a conch shell on her departure and return home. 

It is a repetitive practice that will chime with people whose own particular routines and rituals make the world feel like a safer place. 

While it could be inferred that Joan has obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) or may be on the autism spectrum, McLaughlin was wary of putting a label on her.

“There’s a lot of me in Joan and OCD is something that I would have struggled with myself in the past when I was younger, so I had that to draw on.

“I’ve also been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, but I didn’t want to diagnose Joan in any way, because that isn’t what the story is about.”

Joan has a resolutely pragmatic approach to life and a refreshing and often amusing lack of filter in certain social situations. 

There is a particularly funny interaction with her hairdresser, who, making small talk, asks her what she does for a living. Joan replies that she is ‘a public intellectual’.

Sense of mischief from energy of collaboration

“I think that sense of mischief came from the energy of the collaboration and the fact that I had fun writing it. I want readers to laugh when they are reading it.

“Joan is a survivor, in the sense that she’s going to keep going forward and she will find a way around her problems.

“She’s someone who finds life difficult, but she will keep going.”

McLaughlin turned to writing full-time when she was 40, giving up her job as a solicitor. She says there have been moments when she wondered if she made the right choice.

However, recognition in the form of awards such as the prestigious Campbell Windham Prize, worth $165,000, which she won in 2019, have helped validate her decision.

“It was wonderful having that because writing literary fiction, earnings tend to be small. I felt like I was bringing something into our household income.

“It was also important because psychologically, back then, I was doubting myself and what I should be doing, maybe I wasn’t meant to be a writer.

“The prize came at a point when I was having that tussle inside my head. It was like a sign. It was very good timing and gave me a boost.”

Familiarity of Cork setting breeds creativity

Like her previous book, Rituals is set in Cork, and McLaughlin says she finds that for her, familiarity breeds creativity.

“I find it’s easier for me to write if I have a setting that is well known to me. It’s like I have a stage when I’m starting out. 

“Even though I will go on to deliberately mess up the geography for fictional purposes, in my head when I’m writing, I just need to know the stage where I put the characters.”

The novel is also a touching portrait of intergenerational friendship, as Joan forges what might seem to be an unlikely connection with the young lodger that she takes in. 

As a mother of three young adults, McLaughlin was particularly interested in showing a positive depiction of a generation coming of age in a time of global turmoil and technology-induced loneliness.

“I admire young people, and I admire the lodger a lot for his concern for the world that we’re living in. He’s a very kind-hearted, very sensitive human being.

“I also worry about him, because of the problems in the world that he feels he has to take on and solve, and that causes anxiety every day.”

Now that her own three children have grown up, McLaughlin has more time on her hands, which has proved helpful with her latest project, a book that is partly based on a real-life historical event, the Dripsey ambush in 1921 and the kidnapping of a local widow, Mrs Lindsay, who was later killed by the IRA.

McLaughlin received a Markievicz Award for the project; it supports artists who produce work that commemorates the role of women in the historical period 1912-1923, and she has been enjoying the research element immensely.

“I am drawing on local and family history from that time. I have had to do a lot of historical research.

“I loved looking up old newspapers and legal documents and what they could tell us about people. I went to the National Library, and to read letters written at that time was amazing.”

It is clear that McLaughlin is relishing the different directions her work is taking her in and that she has thrived on the creative collaboration with Rea.

“I have been really thinking in recent years about why I write, what I’m putting out into the world and what effect it has on the reader.

“I want to make something that leaves somebody with a little bit of hope or a sense that the world is a worthwhile place to be in.

“I hope readers will feel better about being in the world when they get to the end of the book.”

• Danielle McLaughlin will be at the West Cork Literary Festival on Sunday, July 12, at 12pm in Marino Church, Bantry, for The Island of Imagination: A Literary Tour of Ireland event, with Laureate for Irish Fiction, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, and Mary Morrissy. westcorkmusic.ie;
• Rituals by Danielle McLaughlin is out now.