Author interview: Friendship, painting, and the art of spending time together

Sara Baume speaks to Marjorie Brennan about her latest book, which explores the nature of modern relationships, the vagaries of a creative life, and what it means to truly belong

Sara Baume was born in Lancashire and raised in Cork. A fine art and creative writing graduate, she has received numerous awards, including the Rooney Prize for Literature and the Irish Book Award for best newcomer. Picture: Alice Zoo

• Opening Night 
• Sara Baume 
• Granta, £16.99

“I met Mollie’s paintings before I met Mollie.’

So begins Sara Baume’s Opening Night, which charts her friendship with the American artist Mollie Douthit, whose work she first encounters at a pop-up exhibition in a West Cork shed during the pandemic.

As well as being a writer, Baume is also an artist, and her previous books have featured many aspects of her artistic work.

Opening Night is in itself an accomplished work of art, a complex tapestry in which Baume takes numerous threads, from gentrification to climate change, weaving them seamlessly together.

The book also features images of Douthit’s distinctive paintings of commonplace scenes or objects executed on small canvases. 

Baume says the book was initially meant to be about painting but morphed into a more personal account of a connection between two kindred spirits.

“In a way it’s the least likely book that I was going to write, because anyone who knows me knows that I’m a loner,” says Baume. 

“At the beginning, it was going to be a book about a series of paintings, as the painter makes the paintings, threaded through with our friendship, and our lives during that period.

“But it’s funny, in the process of writing it, I became very curious about other people’s friendship dynamics.

“I would ask people, how many friends do you have, and then there was this kind of confusion about what a friend was, especially in this era when we know lots of people, on social media or whatever.”

Baume discovers that Douthit lives relatively near her in West Cork and their friendship develops against the backdrop of the pandemic, as they meet for monthly swims, with a comforting side dish of soup. 

“We had perfected the art of spending ordinary time together,” she writes.

However, the more settled nature of Baume’s life contrasts with a tumultuous time in Douthit’s as she tries to maintain a long-distance relationship with her Swedish partner while struggling with a chronic pain condition.

Prize-winning debut novel

Baume’s debut novel Spill, Simmer, Falter, Wither, won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2015, and she followed it up with the acclaimed books A Line Made by Walking and Seven Steeples. 

While Opening Night is categorised as memoir by the publishers Granta Books, Baume describes it as creative non-fiction.

“With my previous books, three out of four have been novels, so you’re protected in a way. I’ve always written pretty close to the truth, to my life.

“The intention was always to make the book in the way that Mollie makes paintings, which is trying to recreate a memory, but then also embellishing or subtracting in order to get closer to the emotional truth of the situation.”

One of the other themes in the book is what it means to choose a creative life and the precarity that comes with it. 

Of the artistic community that is drawn to West Cork, Baume writes: “We are the people who choose to have plenty of time, as opposed to plenty of money.”

Even though she has garnered many awards and accolades for her work, it is an issue that gets even more pressing as she gets older. 

“I’m in my 40s and still renting, and actually getting poorer, because with the trajectory of an artist’s career … often it’s the case that you get a big advance for your first novel but then by the time you get to your fourth or fifth book, even if you’ve been doing well all the way through, you just don’t have that same sense of promise, so you start to plateau.

“It’s the same across the arts, but I would never sacrifice the time for money.”

Author's gift for deadpan humour

Baume also has a gift for deadpan humour, with a memorable depiction of a Holy Communion which she stumbles across and a description of West Cork as the Irish Riviera, a tongue-in-cheek tag but one with an underlying seriousness to it.

“I do describe it as this vibrant artistic place where a lot of outsiders have made their home but I can also be very critical about the gentrification — how many second homes and holiday homes there are, and how it’s squeezing out people like me and my community.

“As happens everywhere with gentrification, it will stop being interesting, because the people who are making the culture can’t afford to live there anymore.”

Baume was born in England but her parents moved to Ireland when she was a baby. 

In the book, she describes the “identity crisis” that ensued when she was named on the prestigious Granta list of best young British novelists in 2023.

“When I heard that I was going to be included, I was really flattered, and saw it as a real endorsement of my work. 

“And then when the list was published, I was surprised by how much friction I got from Irish people who were like, how could you let them include you on that list? How dare they call you British? 

“And then on the other hand, British people were like, well, she’s not British, she’s clearly Irish, so she shouldn’t be on the list. I was like, who am I? 

“I’ve lived here since I was four months old, I’m completely Irish in that sense, but you are also raised in a family, so to say that I had no British influence, that British culture was not a part of my upbringing, is to deny the fact that I grew up in a family.”

English-Irish still a big taboo

“I do find it interesting that in these times when there is growing anti-immigrant sentiment, we are encouraged to celebrate citizens who are Chinese-Irish, Polish-Irish, Nigerian-Irish, but to be English Irish is still a big taboo.”

Opening Night is written with an admirably direct and sometimes bracing honesty, which gives Baume some anxiety.

“I am worried. There are times when people will not perhaps love how they’re reflected in the book, the intention was definitely never to upset anyone.

“This is a topic in the book as well, that in order to make good art, sometimes you have to abandon worries about how people are going to feel about every line, it’s impossible to police that over the course of a life.”

Douthit read the book as Baume was writing it and she pays tribute to her friend’s openness and generosity throughout the process.

“There are not a lot of artists or people who would give you such free rein. But she’s also an artist and she understood this need to make good art in the world.

“She’s always had this opinion that it’s like if she made a painting of me — and she did end up making paintings about the times we spent together — I would never come into her studio and try to add a detail or a splash of colour or take something out.

“In the same way, she felt like she didn’t have the right to do that to my writing, so she changed almost nothing.

“She has been a gift to me in that sense. I really hope that the book will bring her paintings to a larger audience.”

Baume says Douthit has withstood many challenges since the book was completed but their friendship is stronger than ever.

“The chronic pain became a deep bone infection, and she ended up back in America, and to-ing and fro-ing, having a terrible time.

“But we are still here. She’s one of my best friends, and I talk to her every day.”

• Opening Night by Sara Baume is published by Granta, £16.99;
• Sara Baume will be appearing with writer and visual artist Marion Coutts at Future Forests, near Bantry at 12pm, Thursday, July 16, as part of the West Cork Literary Festival;
• westcorkmusic.ie