www.independent.ie/topics/Sue+Leonard
THis will take you to a selection of my articles published in The Irish Independent.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Review. Marian Keyes.
This Charming Man.
By Marian Keyes.
Published by Michael Joseph at 14.99 euro.
Published in The Irish Examiner on 7th June.
Take one man. Make him charismatic, powerful and ambitions. Keep him single long enough to build up an interesting past; then fix him up with a fiancée, and watch the fallout.
In her new novel, This Charming Man, Marian Keyes tells the stories of three women. There’s Lola, a scatty stylist who dresses the ladies who lunch. There’s Grace, who could do with some styling, but doesn’t need it for her job as chief feature writer on Ireland’s best selling broadsheet. And there’s her twin sister Marnie; who appears as a happily married mum of two who holds down a high flying job in London.
Lola’s life falls apart when her boyfriend, the charming politician Paddy de Courcy becomes engaged to someone else. Her career on hold, she skitters off to County Clare to lick her wounds. That Marnie, and even Grace are also damaged by the news takes longer to seep through.
Marian Keyes’s novels have always been bittersweet. She always writes about characters who are so real; so rounded, that readers round the world can identify with them. This time, though, she has surpassed herself.
Keyes brings all the women vividly alive. She paints such an accurate picture of the way feature journalism works, that I know I can trust her to be as accurate on the lives of stylists, and financial dealers.
As for her descriptions of Marnie; and the way she descends slowly into extreme alcoholism; through the panic; the denial, the pain and the shame; it feels so authentic that no reader can fail to understand the condition better, after reading the book, than they did before.
For all that, though, This Charming Man is not a dark book. Yes, the content will shock readers; there’s worse than alcoholism here. But there’s also poignancy, loads of sex, and dollops of delicious humour.
Keyes’s pacing is perfect. It’s like a game of pass the parcel, where every layer that’s unwrapped reveals yet another surprise.
Keyes has long been described as the queen of chick lit- outstripping her rivals by a mile. This Charming Man defies that most derogatory term. This is a deep multi layered novel, yet is loses none of Keyes’s famed accessibility. This Charming Man will make you think. It will also keep you entertained on a plane, or by the pool. This novel is truly magnificent.
© Sue Leonard. 2008.
By Marian Keyes.
Published by Michael Joseph at 14.99 euro.
Published in The Irish Examiner on 7th June.
Take one man. Make him charismatic, powerful and ambitions. Keep him single long enough to build up an interesting past; then fix him up with a fiancée, and watch the fallout.
In her new novel, This Charming Man, Marian Keyes tells the stories of three women. There’s Lola, a scatty stylist who dresses the ladies who lunch. There’s Grace, who could do with some styling, but doesn’t need it for her job as chief feature writer on Ireland’s best selling broadsheet. And there’s her twin sister Marnie; who appears as a happily married mum of two who holds down a high flying job in London.
Lola’s life falls apart when her boyfriend, the charming politician Paddy de Courcy becomes engaged to someone else. Her career on hold, she skitters off to County Clare to lick her wounds. That Marnie, and even Grace are also damaged by the news takes longer to seep through.
Marian Keyes’s novels have always been bittersweet. She always writes about characters who are so real; so rounded, that readers round the world can identify with them. This time, though, she has surpassed herself.
Keyes brings all the women vividly alive. She paints such an accurate picture of the way feature journalism works, that I know I can trust her to be as accurate on the lives of stylists, and financial dealers.
As for her descriptions of Marnie; and the way she descends slowly into extreme alcoholism; through the panic; the denial, the pain and the shame; it feels so authentic that no reader can fail to understand the condition better, after reading the book, than they did before.
For all that, though, This Charming Man is not a dark book. Yes, the content will shock readers; there’s worse than alcoholism here. But there’s also poignancy, loads of sex, and dollops of delicious humour.
Keyes’s pacing is perfect. It’s like a game of pass the parcel, where every layer that’s unwrapped reveals yet another surprise.
Keyes has long been described as the queen of chick lit- outstripping her rivals by a mile. This Charming Man defies that most derogatory term. This is a deep multi layered novel, yet is loses none of Keyes’s famed accessibility. This Charming Man will make you think. It will also keep you entertained on a plane, or by the pool. This novel is truly magnificent.
© Sue Leonard. 2008.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Heart Children.
Heart Children.
By Sue Leonard.
Published by the Irish Independent, Health and Living, July 21st 2008.
Jim O’Brien is 32. He suffers from chronic heart failure. He lives a relatively normal life thanks to his medication, but he has to watch his diet, and take care not to overdo things.
“Late nights aren’t great for me; and the gym is off limits,” he says. “But I can cycle and walk at my own pace.”
Jim was born with a severe heart condition. And back in 1976 the state of heart surgery was relatively poor.
“I was born blue,” he says. “I had transposition; that means that my pulmonary artery and Aorta are reversed. I immediately got a ‘baffle’ which helps the blood to flow properly, and when I was two I had major heart surgery in the Royal Brompton in London. You could not get surgery in Ireland back then.
“I stayed in hospital for six weeks. I slowly recovered, and by the time I started school I could do most things. I could play football, ride my bike and swim, no problem. But I couldn’t keep up with my friends.
“At 13 I wanted to take football to a higher level. I began to train, but at my check up, the cardiologist noticed there’d been strain on my heart. I told him about the football, and he said, ‘no way!’ He said ‘golf or chess are your level.’ That was a difficult moment.”
Chairperson of Heart Children Ireland, Jim now manages his condition well.
“I know something is wrong if I get palpitations,” he says. “I get them once a week, and then, sometimes, I feel tightness across my chest. I just sit down and relax when that happens. There is no need to panic.
“Three years ago I felt faint and kept losing consciousness. I went to A and E in the Mater, and it turned out the medication I was taking for my cold contained a large amount of caffeine. That was what caused it.
“My condition will deteriorate with age,” he says. “Ultimately I will need a heart transplant. With technology improving, though, there are other measures they can take first. They can now put a small defibrillator in my chest; that would kick my heart into action if it missed three beats.”
A baby born with Jim’s condition today could expect a much better quality of life.
“The world has come on in leaps and bounds in cardiac care in the past ten or twenty years,” says Dr Paul Oslizlok, a Consultant Paediatric Cardiologist at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children.
“Take Hyperplastic Left Heart Syndrome; a condition where the left side of the heart does not form properly. 15 or 20 babies are born with that condition in Ireland each year and in the past it was inoperable. Those babies would have died.
“We can operate, now, on more and more complex conditions and with greater success,” says Dr Oslizlok. “And thanks to medical advances we can avoid open heart surgery in a lot of cases. A lot of operations are carried out through cardiac catheterisation. Holes can be opened and closed this way.” (When a tube passes through a vein to the heart, so avoiding full surgery.)
“It’s difficult telling a parent of a new, healthy looking baby that the baby will not live without surgery; and that it may, eventually, need a heart transplant,” he says. “That is an enormous amount to take in. But maybe, in ten or fifteen years technology will have advanced. Maybe we will be growing specific hearts for specific babies.”
The cardiac unit At Our Lady’s Hospital is seriously understaffed. There are 5 consultants and there should be 10.
“I work a 12 hour day, but I love my job,” says Dr Oslizlok. “It’s a remarkable thing to do. To find out what is wrong with a baby and make it better.”
James Mohan was born with a serious heart condition. At birth though, the six and a half year old seemed well. Delivered by C-section because he was breech, he looked healthy and nicely pink.
“James latched onto the breast immediately,” remembers his mum, Brenda. “He seemed absolutely fine.”
The next day, though; when the paediatrician came to check him over, he heard a heart murmur.
“He asked us if there was a history of it in the family, and he told me he’d have to take James up to ICU. Shane and I weren’t too worried at first.
“When we arrived up in ICU, though, James was lying under a hot lamp, with wires coming out of him. I remember thinking, ‘This is getting hairy.’ The Doctor said, ‘I think you should sit down.’
“He said, ‘your baby is very, very sick. We don’t know what exactly is wrong because we haven’t the machinery here; so we’re sending him across to Our Ladies Hospital in Crumlin.
“I remember asking the nurses, ‘is my baby going to die?’ They could not say. They wouldn’t meet my eye. It was terrible.”
Shane went to Crumlin with James; but Brenda had to stay behind. The hospital did loads of tests; and Shane went back to the Rotunda that evening, taking a friend, Celine, who was a nurse, with him.
“Celine explained what his condition meant. She said they could fix him up until they could fix him no more; and then he would need a heart transplant.
“I went to Crumlin during the day, and back to the Rotunda for a few days; then the following Monday we went to pick James up.
“They explained that James had been born with his pulmonary artery and his aorta back to front. And he only had three chambers in his heart. They’d been worried he wouldn’t get through that first night.
“They said they’d operate when he was nine months old; and meanwhile we were to treat him as normally as possible. They said he’d always get tired; and that heart children have a third of the normal energy.
“That first year was tough. We were so scared because we did not know what to expect. We just cherished him every day.”
That first operation went well. The second one, though, performed when James was 4 was tougher.
“It was hard having to explain it to James,” says Brenda. “And he seemed to blame me. There were times he would not talk to me. Shane became the person he’d cuddle up to.
“I’d had another baby by then; Tom was 2 ½ and I’d just become pregnant again. I was so pleased. Then I had a miscarriage. That was devastating.”
James started school at five. But his first year was tough. He couldn’t keep up with the other children in the playground, and they teased him. They didn’t realise there was anything wrong with James, because he doesn’t look sick.
“That’s the hard thing,” says Brenda. “And you don’t know how much to explain to other children. You don’t want to frighten them.”
He’s happier this year. He’s made friends who don’t want to play football all the time. At the moment James is well. He’s only missed one day of school in his almost two years there; and that was due to a bug; not his heart.
“He’s well for a heart child. We’re lucky,” says Brenda. “And technology is improving all the time. They were saying he’d need a transplant in his teens. Now they’re saying it will be in his thirties or forties.
“He will need a procedure next year though,” she says. “It won’t be open heart surgery; it’s done through cardiac catheterisation. That will be hard for him.”
There’s one good thing though. The charity, Heart Children Ireland has recently set up a website for children. It explains how the heart works; who children will meet during their stay in hospital, and what the procedures are.
“It’s a wonderful site,” says Brenda. “I’ve shown it to friends of James’s. They now understand what is wrong. When he goes into hospital, the school will be able to access the site on their whiteboard. They will all be able to see where James has gone. That’s amazing.”
HEART FACTS.
· 600 babies are born each year in Ireland with Congenital heart problems.
· 300 of these will need an operation in infancy. The rest may not need surgery; or may need an operation later in life.
· In the mid eighties 20 -30pc of babies born with severe heart conditions survived until adulthood. Today that figure is 90- 95 pc
· The rate of congenital heart problems is high in Ireland compared to that in the UK or France. This is because, without termination, Ireland has a high rate of Down syndrome. And half of babies with born with Down Syndrome have a heart complaint.
For More information and Support; www.heartchildren.ie
© Sue Leonard. 2008.
By Sue Leonard.
Published by the Irish Independent, Health and Living, July 21st 2008.
Jim O’Brien is 32. He suffers from chronic heart failure. He lives a relatively normal life thanks to his medication, but he has to watch his diet, and take care not to overdo things.
“Late nights aren’t great for me; and the gym is off limits,” he says. “But I can cycle and walk at my own pace.”
Jim was born with a severe heart condition. And back in 1976 the state of heart surgery was relatively poor.
“I was born blue,” he says. “I had transposition; that means that my pulmonary artery and Aorta are reversed. I immediately got a ‘baffle’ which helps the blood to flow properly, and when I was two I had major heart surgery in the Royal Brompton in London. You could not get surgery in Ireland back then.
“I stayed in hospital for six weeks. I slowly recovered, and by the time I started school I could do most things. I could play football, ride my bike and swim, no problem. But I couldn’t keep up with my friends.
“At 13 I wanted to take football to a higher level. I began to train, but at my check up, the cardiologist noticed there’d been strain on my heart. I told him about the football, and he said, ‘no way!’ He said ‘golf or chess are your level.’ That was a difficult moment.”
Chairperson of Heart Children Ireland, Jim now manages his condition well.
“I know something is wrong if I get palpitations,” he says. “I get them once a week, and then, sometimes, I feel tightness across my chest. I just sit down and relax when that happens. There is no need to panic.
“Three years ago I felt faint and kept losing consciousness. I went to A and E in the Mater, and it turned out the medication I was taking for my cold contained a large amount of caffeine. That was what caused it.
“My condition will deteriorate with age,” he says. “Ultimately I will need a heart transplant. With technology improving, though, there are other measures they can take first. They can now put a small defibrillator in my chest; that would kick my heart into action if it missed three beats.”
A baby born with Jim’s condition today could expect a much better quality of life.
“The world has come on in leaps and bounds in cardiac care in the past ten or twenty years,” says Dr Paul Oslizlok, a Consultant Paediatric Cardiologist at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children.
“Take Hyperplastic Left Heart Syndrome; a condition where the left side of the heart does not form properly. 15 or 20 babies are born with that condition in Ireland each year and in the past it was inoperable. Those babies would have died.
“We can operate, now, on more and more complex conditions and with greater success,” says Dr Oslizlok. “And thanks to medical advances we can avoid open heart surgery in a lot of cases. A lot of operations are carried out through cardiac catheterisation. Holes can be opened and closed this way.” (When a tube passes through a vein to the heart, so avoiding full surgery.)
“It’s difficult telling a parent of a new, healthy looking baby that the baby will not live without surgery; and that it may, eventually, need a heart transplant,” he says. “That is an enormous amount to take in. But maybe, in ten or fifteen years technology will have advanced. Maybe we will be growing specific hearts for specific babies.”
The cardiac unit At Our Lady’s Hospital is seriously understaffed. There are 5 consultants and there should be 10.
“I work a 12 hour day, but I love my job,” says Dr Oslizlok. “It’s a remarkable thing to do. To find out what is wrong with a baby and make it better.”
James Mohan was born with a serious heart condition. At birth though, the six and a half year old seemed well. Delivered by C-section because he was breech, he looked healthy and nicely pink.
“James latched onto the breast immediately,” remembers his mum, Brenda. “He seemed absolutely fine.”
The next day, though; when the paediatrician came to check him over, he heard a heart murmur.
“He asked us if there was a history of it in the family, and he told me he’d have to take James up to ICU. Shane and I weren’t too worried at first.
“When we arrived up in ICU, though, James was lying under a hot lamp, with wires coming out of him. I remember thinking, ‘This is getting hairy.’ The Doctor said, ‘I think you should sit down.’
“He said, ‘your baby is very, very sick. We don’t know what exactly is wrong because we haven’t the machinery here; so we’re sending him across to Our Ladies Hospital in Crumlin.
“I remember asking the nurses, ‘is my baby going to die?’ They could not say. They wouldn’t meet my eye. It was terrible.”
Shane went to Crumlin with James; but Brenda had to stay behind. The hospital did loads of tests; and Shane went back to the Rotunda that evening, taking a friend, Celine, who was a nurse, with him.
“Celine explained what his condition meant. She said they could fix him up until they could fix him no more; and then he would need a heart transplant.
“I went to Crumlin during the day, and back to the Rotunda for a few days; then the following Monday we went to pick James up.
“They explained that James had been born with his pulmonary artery and his aorta back to front. And he only had three chambers in his heart. They’d been worried he wouldn’t get through that first night.
“They said they’d operate when he was nine months old; and meanwhile we were to treat him as normally as possible. They said he’d always get tired; and that heart children have a third of the normal energy.
“That first year was tough. We were so scared because we did not know what to expect. We just cherished him every day.”
That first operation went well. The second one, though, performed when James was 4 was tougher.
“It was hard having to explain it to James,” says Brenda. “And he seemed to blame me. There were times he would not talk to me. Shane became the person he’d cuddle up to.
“I’d had another baby by then; Tom was 2 ½ and I’d just become pregnant again. I was so pleased. Then I had a miscarriage. That was devastating.”
James started school at five. But his first year was tough. He couldn’t keep up with the other children in the playground, and they teased him. They didn’t realise there was anything wrong with James, because he doesn’t look sick.
“That’s the hard thing,” says Brenda. “And you don’t know how much to explain to other children. You don’t want to frighten them.”
He’s happier this year. He’s made friends who don’t want to play football all the time. At the moment James is well. He’s only missed one day of school in his almost two years there; and that was due to a bug; not his heart.
“He’s well for a heart child. We’re lucky,” says Brenda. “And technology is improving all the time. They were saying he’d need a transplant in his teens. Now they’re saying it will be in his thirties or forties.
“He will need a procedure next year though,” she says. “It won’t be open heart surgery; it’s done through cardiac catheterisation. That will be hard for him.”
There’s one good thing though. The charity, Heart Children Ireland has recently set up a website for children. It explains how the heart works; who children will meet during their stay in hospital, and what the procedures are.
“It’s a wonderful site,” says Brenda. “I’ve shown it to friends of James’s. They now understand what is wrong. When he goes into hospital, the school will be able to access the site on their whiteboard. They will all be able to see where James has gone. That’s amazing.”
HEART FACTS.
· 600 babies are born each year in Ireland with Congenital heart problems.
· 300 of these will need an operation in infancy. The rest may not need surgery; or may need an operation later in life.
· In the mid eighties 20 -30pc of babies born with severe heart conditions survived until adulthood. Today that figure is 90- 95 pc
· The rate of congenital heart problems is high in Ireland compared to that in the UK or France. This is because, without termination, Ireland has a high rate of Down syndrome. And half of babies with born with Down Syndrome have a heart complaint.
For More information and Support; www.heartchildren.ie
© Sue Leonard. 2008.
Men Have a Biological Clock too.
Men Have a Biological Clock too.
By Sue Leonard.
Published by The Irish Examiner ‘Feelgood,’ 18th July 2008.
We all know that women have a biological clock. And that its ticking becomes louder the older that she gets. But did you know that men have a biological clock too?
A new French study has found that the chance of a successful pregnancy recedes when a man is over 35; and falls significantly when he is over 40.
French researchers at the Eylau Centre for Assisted Reproduction conducted a study of over 12,000 couples undergoing Intrauterine Insemination- IUI. They examined the man’s sperm, checking its quantity, motility and its size and shape. Then they recorded the couple’s rates of pregnancy, miscarriage and birth.
The team found that where the father was in his late 30’s, the rate of miscarriage increased. And if the man was over 40 the chances of a successful pregnancy were even lower.
Presenting the research, Dr Stephanie Belloc told a conference in Barcelona that such couples should be offered ICSI. (Where a sperm is injected directly into an egg.)
Dr Edgar Mocanu of HARI; the infertility clinic attached to the Rotunda Hospital, sees an increasing number of males coming forward for ICSI.
“What was perceived as a female problem is now recognised more as a couple issue,” he said. “And thus the investigation and treatment of the male has now a recognised place in the practise of infertility.”
Dr David Walsh of the SIMS clinic, whilst always aware that infertility is a ‘couple’ issue,’ is surprised by the degree of the problem as highlighted by the research.
“We knew that age matters, and that under 35 is a better time to have a baby, but with men, the talk was always of the risks for much older men; those in their fifties and sixties.
“There was, for example, an increased risk of achondroplasia (dwarfism), in their children. We now see that in men beyond 35 there is an increase in quite a lot of abnormalities; in things like autism, schizophrenia and cleft lip.
“The rate of change in the female is higher than in the male, but the difference is just in the magnitude. The same changes do happen to men.
“The research is, ultimately useful,” he says, “It gives out a good message. The couple need to address infertility as a shared problem. And that is good. It brings you closer to a shared solution.”
Zita West, who runs a fertility and preconception clinic in London, is not at all surprised by the research.
“When I first started out I just saw women; now I see couples,” she says. “Men have 50pc of the genetic material. Up to a year ago they only made lifestyle changes if they had a poor sperm count. Research like this shows that men are just as involved in the reproduction process as women. ICSI only takes one sperm, but the quality of that sperm is really important.
“Men are becoming far more accepting. Especially when they have had a couple of failed ICSI’s. They say, ‘I don’t want to go through all that again. I want to do everything I can to improve my sperm.’
“With IVF the whole focus is on getting pregnant,” she says. “I am trying to educate couples that what you are looking for is for the healthiest egg and sperm, and there is a lot that men can do to improve their sperm.
“It is, though, all down to luck and genetics,” she warns. “The quality of sperm can improve enormously for some men when they change their lifestyles; others make the changes and there is no difference.”
Sarah Leather, a Naturopath specialising in fertility, says that men tend not to take the fertility issue seriously enough.
“Some men refuse to come to my clinic; especially if their sperm analysis test is normal. But this needs to be maintained, and they could be doing things this weekend that inhabit their sperm in 3 or 4 months time, when they are trying for a baby. Sperm quality changes all the time.
“Men in their 30’s are under a lot of stress. They feel they have to achieve a lot, and if they don’t have children they tend to party. They do not see the need to change their lifestyle, and they will go out and drink 10 to 15 pints every Friday and Saturday night. They should decrease to 7 drinks over the course of the week. Women tend to take the issue more seriously.
“Never apportion blame,” she says. “And above all remember that fertility for a man in no reflection of his virility. There is absolutely no link between the two.”
Acupuncture has been proven to boost the quality of sperm. A 2006 study at Shanghai University, for instance, found that it helps male infertility in a significant way.
“And it’s worth men getting treated, even where his sperm has been tested, and he’s been told that it’s ok,” says Paul O’Brien, of the Meridian Acupuncture Clinic. “I might find a pattern of disharmony.”
One couple who went to see Paul had been trying for a baby for fifteen months. They’d been referred to a clinic for IVF because the man’s sperm was abnormal.
“The motility was only 10pc and it should be at least 50pc,” says Paul.
“While they were waiting for their appointment they came to me for acupuncture. They also made changes to their diet. When the clinic next tested the husband’s sperm, they discovered it was normal. It has risen to 50pc motility and they no longer needed IVF.
“I’ve continued to treat them, and the husband’s sperm now has over 90pc motility. That’s just amazing. I’m hoping they will soon have some good news.”
CASE HISTORY.
Steve 39, and 36 year old Louise had been trying for a baby for 3 years. They’d been to a fertility clinic, and although Louise’s tests came back normal, Steve’s sperm had been slightly low in number and in motility.
“The Clinic advised us to go for ICSI,” says Steve, “but we found the clinic daunting. I was terrified I’d meet someone I knew there.
“It was my decision to see Sarah Leather,” he says. “I wanted to feel there was something I could work on. It was tough having bad news every month. Everyone tells you to ‘relax and it will happen,’ but that isn’t helpful.
“Sarah gave us a long list of ‘things to do.’ She made me realise that I was in a cycle of stress. She told me to stop using a laptop on my lap all day; and to try and relax in the evenings. She told me to cut right down on my drinking, to exercise, and to improve my diet.
“We both made changes. We stopped getting takeaways and convenience food and started to plan and to cook. And we cut our drinking down to 2 or 3 glasses twice a week.
“We saw Sarah two months later, and we both felt so much healthier. She suggested that we get another semen test done, and see her in another two months. Before I had organised it, Louise had a positive pregnancy test. The baby is due in January. We are both over the moon.”
WAYS TO BOOST THE HEALTH OF YOUR SPERM
Quit smoking. Or if you can’t do that, cut down to around five a day.
Stop binge drinking. Limit yourself to two to three drinks twice a week. And cut out all recreational drugs.
Improve your diet. Eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, and cut down on convenience food and takeaways. Eat fish, meat and nuts and seeds for zinc.
Take a good all round supplement like Fertility Plus for men by Marian Granville.
Cut stress. It’s worth working fewer hours for a while if it means you can produce a family.
Take a moderate amount of exercise. But don’t over exercise, and don’t cycle all day in tight or padded shorts.
Avoid sitting in a sauna or a Jacuzzi.
Don’t sit with your laptop on your lap all day. And take that mobile phone out of pocket. Take hourly breaks to stretch and get your circulation going.
Avoid toxins. Get somewhere else to kill the weeds on your drive, and don’t strip leaded paint off your walls.
Don’t wait until your wife has had all her tests done to get your semen tested. Go to a clinic, if that has been recommended. Get assessed, and then decide whether you want to go for IVF or ICSI. The older you are, the more panic there is.
For More Information.
Sims Clinic – www.sims.ie
Zita West – www.zitawest.com
Paul O’Brien- 087 901 9627.
Sarah Leather – 087 233 2023.
© Sue Leonard. 2008.
By Sue Leonard.
Published by The Irish Examiner ‘Feelgood,’ 18th July 2008.
We all know that women have a biological clock. And that its ticking becomes louder the older that she gets. But did you know that men have a biological clock too?
A new French study has found that the chance of a successful pregnancy recedes when a man is over 35; and falls significantly when he is over 40.
French researchers at the Eylau Centre for Assisted Reproduction conducted a study of over 12,000 couples undergoing Intrauterine Insemination- IUI. They examined the man’s sperm, checking its quantity, motility and its size and shape. Then they recorded the couple’s rates of pregnancy, miscarriage and birth.
The team found that where the father was in his late 30’s, the rate of miscarriage increased. And if the man was over 40 the chances of a successful pregnancy were even lower.
Presenting the research, Dr Stephanie Belloc told a conference in Barcelona that such couples should be offered ICSI. (Where a sperm is injected directly into an egg.)
Dr Edgar Mocanu of HARI; the infertility clinic attached to the Rotunda Hospital, sees an increasing number of males coming forward for ICSI.
“What was perceived as a female problem is now recognised more as a couple issue,” he said. “And thus the investigation and treatment of the male has now a recognised place in the practise of infertility.”
Dr David Walsh of the SIMS clinic, whilst always aware that infertility is a ‘couple’ issue,’ is surprised by the degree of the problem as highlighted by the research.
“We knew that age matters, and that under 35 is a better time to have a baby, but with men, the talk was always of the risks for much older men; those in their fifties and sixties.
“There was, for example, an increased risk of achondroplasia (dwarfism), in their children. We now see that in men beyond 35 there is an increase in quite a lot of abnormalities; in things like autism, schizophrenia and cleft lip.
“The rate of change in the female is higher than in the male, but the difference is just in the magnitude. The same changes do happen to men.
“The research is, ultimately useful,” he says, “It gives out a good message. The couple need to address infertility as a shared problem. And that is good. It brings you closer to a shared solution.”
Zita West, who runs a fertility and preconception clinic in London, is not at all surprised by the research.
“When I first started out I just saw women; now I see couples,” she says. “Men have 50pc of the genetic material. Up to a year ago they only made lifestyle changes if they had a poor sperm count. Research like this shows that men are just as involved in the reproduction process as women. ICSI only takes one sperm, but the quality of that sperm is really important.
“Men are becoming far more accepting. Especially when they have had a couple of failed ICSI’s. They say, ‘I don’t want to go through all that again. I want to do everything I can to improve my sperm.’
“With IVF the whole focus is on getting pregnant,” she says. “I am trying to educate couples that what you are looking for is for the healthiest egg and sperm, and there is a lot that men can do to improve their sperm.
“It is, though, all down to luck and genetics,” she warns. “The quality of sperm can improve enormously for some men when they change their lifestyles; others make the changes and there is no difference.”
Sarah Leather, a Naturopath specialising in fertility, says that men tend not to take the fertility issue seriously enough.
“Some men refuse to come to my clinic; especially if their sperm analysis test is normal. But this needs to be maintained, and they could be doing things this weekend that inhabit their sperm in 3 or 4 months time, when they are trying for a baby. Sperm quality changes all the time.
“Men in their 30’s are under a lot of stress. They feel they have to achieve a lot, and if they don’t have children they tend to party. They do not see the need to change their lifestyle, and they will go out and drink 10 to 15 pints every Friday and Saturday night. They should decrease to 7 drinks over the course of the week. Women tend to take the issue more seriously.
“Never apportion blame,” she says. “And above all remember that fertility for a man in no reflection of his virility. There is absolutely no link between the two.”
Acupuncture has been proven to boost the quality of sperm. A 2006 study at Shanghai University, for instance, found that it helps male infertility in a significant way.
“And it’s worth men getting treated, even where his sperm has been tested, and he’s been told that it’s ok,” says Paul O’Brien, of the Meridian Acupuncture Clinic. “I might find a pattern of disharmony.”
One couple who went to see Paul had been trying for a baby for fifteen months. They’d been referred to a clinic for IVF because the man’s sperm was abnormal.
“The motility was only 10pc and it should be at least 50pc,” says Paul.
“While they were waiting for their appointment they came to me for acupuncture. They also made changes to their diet. When the clinic next tested the husband’s sperm, they discovered it was normal. It has risen to 50pc motility and they no longer needed IVF.
“I’ve continued to treat them, and the husband’s sperm now has over 90pc motility. That’s just amazing. I’m hoping they will soon have some good news.”
CASE HISTORY.
Steve 39, and 36 year old Louise had been trying for a baby for 3 years. They’d been to a fertility clinic, and although Louise’s tests came back normal, Steve’s sperm had been slightly low in number and in motility.
“The Clinic advised us to go for ICSI,” says Steve, “but we found the clinic daunting. I was terrified I’d meet someone I knew there.
“It was my decision to see Sarah Leather,” he says. “I wanted to feel there was something I could work on. It was tough having bad news every month. Everyone tells you to ‘relax and it will happen,’ but that isn’t helpful.
“Sarah gave us a long list of ‘things to do.’ She made me realise that I was in a cycle of stress. She told me to stop using a laptop on my lap all day; and to try and relax in the evenings. She told me to cut right down on my drinking, to exercise, and to improve my diet.
“We both made changes. We stopped getting takeaways and convenience food and started to plan and to cook. And we cut our drinking down to 2 or 3 glasses twice a week.
“We saw Sarah two months later, and we both felt so much healthier. She suggested that we get another semen test done, and see her in another two months. Before I had organised it, Louise had a positive pregnancy test. The baby is due in January. We are both over the moon.”
WAYS TO BOOST THE HEALTH OF YOUR SPERM
Quit smoking. Or if you can’t do that, cut down to around five a day.
Stop binge drinking. Limit yourself to two to three drinks twice a week. And cut out all recreational drugs.
Improve your diet. Eat lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, and cut down on convenience food and takeaways. Eat fish, meat and nuts and seeds for zinc.
Take a good all round supplement like Fertility Plus for men by Marian Granville.
Cut stress. It’s worth working fewer hours for a while if it means you can produce a family.
Take a moderate amount of exercise. But don’t over exercise, and don’t cycle all day in tight or padded shorts.
Avoid sitting in a sauna or a Jacuzzi.
Don’t sit with your laptop on your lap all day. And take that mobile phone out of pocket. Take hourly breaks to stretch and get your circulation going.
Avoid toxins. Get somewhere else to kill the weeds on your drive, and don’t strip leaded paint off your walls.
Don’t wait until your wife has had all her tests done to get your semen tested. Go to a clinic, if that has been recommended. Get assessed, and then decide whether you want to go for IVF or ICSI. The older you are, the more panic there is.
For More Information.
Sims Clinic – www.sims.ie
Zita West – www.zitawest.com
Paul O’Brien- 087 901 9627.
Sarah Leather – 087 233 2023.
© Sue Leonard. 2008.
Review. Trauma by Patrick McGrath.
Trauma.
By Patrick McGrath.
Published by Bloomsbury at 14.99 euro.
Reviewed by Sue Leonard.
Published in The Irish Examiner. 19th July 2008.
A psychiatrist, Charlie Weir works with a group of traumatised war veterans after their return from Vietnam. Through therapy, they learn to face their trauma, before they can reach normality, and the timing is crucial.
So when the worst affected, Danny, shoots himself soon after Charlie has pushed him to remember, Charlie is convinced it is all his fault. Charlie’s wife, Agnes thinks so too; and that matters, because Danny was her much loved brother. So Charlie leaves the marital home, becomes depressed, and lives only for his work.
Trauma opens after the death of Charlie’s mother. She’s a depressive whose husband abandoned her, and Charlie adored her. He spent his childhood looking after her, cheering her each time she sank into an alcoholic stupor. His mother though, didn’t return this affection, making it clear that it was her elder son, Walter, whom she revered.
Narrated in the first person by Charlie, the novel follows the psychiatrist through the succeeding months. Professionally solid, his personal life spirals ever more out of control, and this, we are shown, is mainly due to his weak emotional health.
Dreaming of returning to Agnes, and to his eight year old daughter Cassie, Charlie nevertheless becomes embroiled with a beauty called Nora. She, though, is disturbed to the point of derangement, and the relationship starts to slip into one of therapist and patient.
This isn’t the first time that McGrath has tackled the issue of passionate insanity. Through his novels and short stories he has made the gothic, and the twisted love story his own.
This time, his venture has been especially successful. Charlie is an enlightening narrator, as he analyses his every thought and mood. He makes the reader understand the tricky profession of psychiatry; and how over analysis can impinge onto the personal too.
But is Charlie right in thinking that Walter is constantly out to get him? And what of his recurring nightmares of Danny’s death? Are they the cause of his trouble, or are there deeper secrets to be unearthed from his past?
Powerfully written and structured, Trauma is a character driven novel which will keep the reader intrigued from the first page. And towards the end, when Charlie’s mental state is heading towards the abyss, the book becomes the best possible literary thriller.
© Sue Leonard. 2008. .
By Patrick McGrath.
Published by Bloomsbury at 14.99 euro.
Reviewed by Sue Leonard.
Published in The Irish Examiner. 19th July 2008.
A psychiatrist, Charlie Weir works with a group of traumatised war veterans after their return from Vietnam. Through therapy, they learn to face their trauma, before they can reach normality, and the timing is crucial.
So when the worst affected, Danny, shoots himself soon after Charlie has pushed him to remember, Charlie is convinced it is all his fault. Charlie’s wife, Agnes thinks so too; and that matters, because Danny was her much loved brother. So Charlie leaves the marital home, becomes depressed, and lives only for his work.
Trauma opens after the death of Charlie’s mother. She’s a depressive whose husband abandoned her, and Charlie adored her. He spent his childhood looking after her, cheering her each time she sank into an alcoholic stupor. His mother though, didn’t return this affection, making it clear that it was her elder son, Walter, whom she revered.
Narrated in the first person by Charlie, the novel follows the psychiatrist through the succeeding months. Professionally solid, his personal life spirals ever more out of control, and this, we are shown, is mainly due to his weak emotional health.
Dreaming of returning to Agnes, and to his eight year old daughter Cassie, Charlie nevertheless becomes embroiled with a beauty called Nora. She, though, is disturbed to the point of derangement, and the relationship starts to slip into one of therapist and patient.
This isn’t the first time that McGrath has tackled the issue of passionate insanity. Through his novels and short stories he has made the gothic, and the twisted love story his own.
This time, his venture has been especially successful. Charlie is an enlightening narrator, as he analyses his every thought and mood. He makes the reader understand the tricky profession of psychiatry; and how over analysis can impinge onto the personal too.
But is Charlie right in thinking that Walter is constantly out to get him? And what of his recurring nightmares of Danny’s death? Are they the cause of his trouble, or are there deeper secrets to be unearthed from his past?
Powerfully written and structured, Trauma is a character driven novel which will keep the reader intrigued from the first page. And towards the end, when Charlie’s mental state is heading towards the abyss, the book becomes the best possible literary thriller.
© Sue Leonard. 2008. .
Interview. Esther Freud.
Esther Freud.
Interviewed by Sue Leonard.
Published in The Irish Examiner. 19th July 2008.
Writers are often urged to write about what they know. For some, that can be constrictive. But not for Esther Freud.
Granddaughter to Sigmund Freud and daughter to the artist Lucien, Esther’s childhood defied convention. And her first novel, featuring a hippy mother who drags her small daughters around Morocco was largely autobiographical.
Esther had her fifth and sixth birthdays in Morocco, and she agrees that she can’t have remembered everything that she wrote about.
“It isn’t that the rest didn’t happen, but I didn’t remember the incidents absolutely, or I twisted things around,” she says, as we talk in the empty dining room in the Morrison Hotel; battling to concentrate against the intrusive background music.
Success has followed Esther in her writing career. She is happily married to an actor, and has three children. Yet her writing, and her conversation betray signs that she has not, entirely managed to banish her early feelings of insecurity.
Hideous Kinky was an absorbing, if whacky story, but it can’t, surely, have been too edifying for Esther’s mother to see herself portrayed as a sometimes, irresponsible mother.
“She was amazing about it, but it must have been hard for her,” says Esther, who has flown in from London to give a talk on her latest novel at the Dublin Writer’s Festival.
“Now that I have children of my own I realise it is not what any mother longs for; to have their children remembering those incidents you would hope they might forget. But I don’t think I would have been able to write anything else without clearing the space in my head that that first book took up.”
Esther has one full sister, and a lot of half brothers and sisters. She won’t tell me how many, because, she says, nobody knows the number for sure.
“My fourth novel, The Wild, was based on the step family we lived in,” she says. “And I did manipulate certain areas and created more goodies and baddies than, maybe, there were.
“And one of my stepsisters said, ‘in your writing you can do anything,’ and she didn’t say it a nice way.” Esther laughs. “We are still good friends. I am very impressed with her for that, and I do know what she meant.
“I am lucky in my family. They are almost all creative people who know what it takes to make something. They actually seem fascinated to see how I reinvent and portray certain aspects of my history.
“I often start with something quite autobiographical, but then I hit something and have to do research. I have a kernel of something that speaks to me that I almost want to unravel.”
With Love Falls that kernel is her relationship with Lucien.
“I started with the absent father and his daughter having breakfast together. That is familiar to me. Then I put them on the train to go to Italy and the story went on from there.
Set in summer 1981 Love Falls depicts the era of Charles and Diana’s wedding wonderfully. Lara is 17. Her normally absent father takes her to Italy to stay with an old friend, Caroline, who isn’t well. They link up with the complex extended family who live nearby. And old secrets start to emerge.
“I wanted to write about a daughter suddenly feeling responsible for her father, because he is out of his own security system. I gave Lambert the same kind of grandeur and respect that my father has, and when he is taken out into the harsh environment, where people are judged on how good they look in a bikini rather than how clever they are, they flounder. I have always felt protective of my father in those moments.”
The novels sees Lambert realising that Lara is no longer a child; hence the holiday.
“I remember, at about 16, turning up at my father’s flat in a dress I had borrowed from a friend. He looked at me and said, ‘oh, do you want to go to dinner to some wonderful place.” Suddenly he saw that I could ‘join in.’ I wanted to capture that moment.”
Lara is still not sure of her rights in the world. She is not sure how to stand up for herself or how to behave, and this makes it hard for her to enjoy herself. The adults treat her as something of a plaything. There is a terrifying scene where the young married Roland ends up forcing Lara to have sex.
“I didn’t want to do that to Lara,” says Esther. “I rewrote and rewrote that scene, thinking that she would not end up getting raped. It could have stayed a rather aggressive game.
“It’s something that, I think, happens to young girls. You don’t know how to say no and the situation can tip. Lara fears that maybe she is not being open minded. There was a fear, growing up back then of being considered frigid. And that was the worst thing you could possibly be. Therefore it was confusing.”
Esther has carved a niche for herself writing of eccentric people of privilege. She does so with seeming effortlessness. But for a long time it didn’t occur to her that she could possibly write. She didn’t even learn to read until she was ten.
“I left school at 16 to do drama,” she says. “I wanted to be an actress. I made the decision early on to do something. Even at eight I needed a plan. I was scared of being adrift.
“I didn’t want to stay at school and I certainly didn’t want to go to university. It didn’t occur to me that I could be a writer without that. I’d thought writing had to be like Anna Karenina; huge and full of continents and wars.”
Then she read two books that changed her mind. One, by Lisa St Aubin de Terán, was a coming of age story of eccentrics; the other by Jean Rhys showed a story told through emotions.
“I thought, ‘that is the way I could tell a story, and I have stories like that to tell.’ Those books really made me want to write, and think that I could do it.”
Writing was and remains a sheer joy. But since the children were born, time is precious.
“I think of writing as an exquisite treat. I am always trying to get a bit of it and I never have time. I’m always thinking, ‘if I could just get to my desk and just get three hours with no interruptions.’ It is rather wonderful to be always longing and never having enough time.”
At 13, 10 and 4, Albie, Anna and Gene are too young, as yet, to read their mother’s novels. But they recently watched the 1998 movie of Hideous Kinky- starring Kate Winslet.
“We watched it because we were all going to Morocco,” says Esther, “and it was so emotional. I was weeping nearly the whole way through. It is, actually, a gentle novel, but all the dramatic bits are squashed into an hour and a half. The children turned to me with startled eyes saying, ‘did that really happen?’ I’d say, ‘hush, it’s all right.’ I was completely shattered by the end of the screening.”
Love Falls by Esther Freud is published by Bloomsbury at 10.79.
©Sue Leonard. 2008.
Interviewed by Sue Leonard.
Published in The Irish Examiner. 19th July 2008.
Writers are often urged to write about what they know. For some, that can be constrictive. But not for Esther Freud.
Granddaughter to Sigmund Freud and daughter to the artist Lucien, Esther’s childhood defied convention. And her first novel, featuring a hippy mother who drags her small daughters around Morocco was largely autobiographical.
Esther had her fifth and sixth birthdays in Morocco, and she agrees that she can’t have remembered everything that she wrote about.
“It isn’t that the rest didn’t happen, but I didn’t remember the incidents absolutely, or I twisted things around,” she says, as we talk in the empty dining room in the Morrison Hotel; battling to concentrate against the intrusive background music.
Success has followed Esther in her writing career. She is happily married to an actor, and has three children. Yet her writing, and her conversation betray signs that she has not, entirely managed to banish her early feelings of insecurity.
Hideous Kinky was an absorbing, if whacky story, but it can’t, surely, have been too edifying for Esther’s mother to see herself portrayed as a sometimes, irresponsible mother.
“She was amazing about it, but it must have been hard for her,” says Esther, who has flown in from London to give a talk on her latest novel at the Dublin Writer’s Festival.
“Now that I have children of my own I realise it is not what any mother longs for; to have their children remembering those incidents you would hope they might forget. But I don’t think I would have been able to write anything else without clearing the space in my head that that first book took up.”
Esther has one full sister, and a lot of half brothers and sisters. She won’t tell me how many, because, she says, nobody knows the number for sure.
“My fourth novel, The Wild, was based on the step family we lived in,” she says. “And I did manipulate certain areas and created more goodies and baddies than, maybe, there were.
“And one of my stepsisters said, ‘in your writing you can do anything,’ and she didn’t say it a nice way.” Esther laughs. “We are still good friends. I am very impressed with her for that, and I do know what she meant.
“I am lucky in my family. They are almost all creative people who know what it takes to make something. They actually seem fascinated to see how I reinvent and portray certain aspects of my history.
“I often start with something quite autobiographical, but then I hit something and have to do research. I have a kernel of something that speaks to me that I almost want to unravel.”
With Love Falls that kernel is her relationship with Lucien.
“I started with the absent father and his daughter having breakfast together. That is familiar to me. Then I put them on the train to go to Italy and the story went on from there.
Set in summer 1981 Love Falls depicts the era of Charles and Diana’s wedding wonderfully. Lara is 17. Her normally absent father takes her to Italy to stay with an old friend, Caroline, who isn’t well. They link up with the complex extended family who live nearby. And old secrets start to emerge.
“I wanted to write about a daughter suddenly feeling responsible for her father, because he is out of his own security system. I gave Lambert the same kind of grandeur and respect that my father has, and when he is taken out into the harsh environment, where people are judged on how good they look in a bikini rather than how clever they are, they flounder. I have always felt protective of my father in those moments.”
The novels sees Lambert realising that Lara is no longer a child; hence the holiday.
“I remember, at about 16, turning up at my father’s flat in a dress I had borrowed from a friend. He looked at me and said, ‘oh, do you want to go to dinner to some wonderful place.” Suddenly he saw that I could ‘join in.’ I wanted to capture that moment.”
Lara is still not sure of her rights in the world. She is not sure how to stand up for herself or how to behave, and this makes it hard for her to enjoy herself. The adults treat her as something of a plaything. There is a terrifying scene where the young married Roland ends up forcing Lara to have sex.
“I didn’t want to do that to Lara,” says Esther. “I rewrote and rewrote that scene, thinking that she would not end up getting raped. It could have stayed a rather aggressive game.
“It’s something that, I think, happens to young girls. You don’t know how to say no and the situation can tip. Lara fears that maybe she is not being open minded. There was a fear, growing up back then of being considered frigid. And that was the worst thing you could possibly be. Therefore it was confusing.”
Esther has carved a niche for herself writing of eccentric people of privilege. She does so with seeming effortlessness. But for a long time it didn’t occur to her that she could possibly write. She didn’t even learn to read until she was ten.
“I left school at 16 to do drama,” she says. “I wanted to be an actress. I made the decision early on to do something. Even at eight I needed a plan. I was scared of being adrift.
“I didn’t want to stay at school and I certainly didn’t want to go to university. It didn’t occur to me that I could be a writer without that. I’d thought writing had to be like Anna Karenina; huge and full of continents and wars.”
Then she read two books that changed her mind. One, by Lisa St Aubin de Terán, was a coming of age story of eccentrics; the other by Jean Rhys showed a story told through emotions.
“I thought, ‘that is the way I could tell a story, and I have stories like that to tell.’ Those books really made me want to write, and think that I could do it.”
Writing was and remains a sheer joy. But since the children were born, time is precious.
“I think of writing as an exquisite treat. I am always trying to get a bit of it and I never have time. I’m always thinking, ‘if I could just get to my desk and just get three hours with no interruptions.’ It is rather wonderful to be always longing and never having enough time.”
At 13, 10 and 4, Albie, Anna and Gene are too young, as yet, to read their mother’s novels. But they recently watched the 1998 movie of Hideous Kinky- starring Kate Winslet.
“We watched it because we were all going to Morocco,” says Esther, “and it was so emotional. I was weeping nearly the whole way through. It is, actually, a gentle novel, but all the dramatic bits are squashed into an hour and a half. The children turned to me with startled eyes saying, ‘did that really happen?’ I’d say, ‘hush, it’s all right.’ I was completely shattered by the end of the screening.”
Love Falls by Esther Freud is published by Bloomsbury at 10.79.
©Sue Leonard. 2008.
Monday, July 14, 2008
INterview. Elizabeth Noble.
Elizabeth Noble.
Interviewed by Sue Leonard.
Published in The Irish Examiner. April 2008.
Elizabeth Noble’s ten year old daughter has been learning the facts of life. She’s at a Catholic school in New York, and asked her mother if it was true that you can only get pregnant if you are married.
Taking a deep breath, Elizabeth explained that a woman can get pregnant every time she has sex with a man. The conversation, though, did not end there.
“Tallulah said, ‘so you and Daddy have done it more than twice then,’” recounts Elizabeth with a laugh. “And I said, ‘Yes. A few more times.
“When she asked if I had done it with anyone apart from her father I thought, ‘I am not ready for that conversation right now!”
The English mum of two daughters is in Dublin to promote her fourth book. It’s called, ‘Things I want my Daughters to Know,’ and we’re drinking coffee in the Merrion Hotel as we discuss whether daughters should know their mother’s secrets.
It’s a dilemma for a character in Elizabeth’s book. Barbara, mum to four daughters has cancer, and knows that time is running out. She’s had a chequered life. Her first marriage failed, leaving her older children with unresolved issues. Her second; to a younger man, was blissful; but she has secrets.
“Lisa and Jennifer are in their thirties; Amanda in her twenties and Hannah is just 15. She feels that none of them are quite ‘set.’ None is in a really good place and there are things she wants to help them with. So she leaves them letters and a journal. Hoping that this way she can help them.”
Three of the letters are gentle declarations of love. But the one to the rootless Amanda tells a devastating secret that threatens to derail her life completely.
“Leaving that letter was deeply cowardly; it leaves Amanda with this emotional crevasse. I wanted to show Barbara was flawed. I didn’t want her to be totally idolised after her death,” says Elizabeth.
Elizabeth shot to fame when her first novel, ‘The Reading Group’ made number one in Britain. She writes movingly about friendship; about love, and the dilemmas women go through, and she makes you care. You will laugh; cry, and remember the characters long after you have put the novel down.
Why, though, did she decide to write about mothers and daughters?
“It is the most complicated relationship,” she says. “I am very close to my mother, but the bond is not without its dark side. We are alike; but we were raised differently. My mum’s mother was ill, and she had to, virtually, bring up her five siblings.
“She hasn’t tried to live through me; but she is aware that she could have done the things I have done. That has sometimes caused a struggle for her.”
Elizabeth studied English at Oxford, and worked in publishing before she turned to writing.
“Mum was a great support. But she didn’t like my third book,” says Elizabeth. “It was published when I was 37 and it completely floored me. I was devastated. I thought, ‘I am nearly 40. I have got my own children, but my mother’s approval is still vital to me.’
“She is pleased with this book and pleased with me for it. Big sighs of relief!” laughs Elizabeth. “But the most relieved is my husband, David. Because he has to mop up the aftermath.”
It’s not just her mother’s opinion that worries Elizabeth.
“Publication time makes me feel vulnerable,” she says. “It’s great when you get good reviews and feedback; it’s wonderful when you get good sales figures, but it’s the bad reviews that become imprinted on my brain.
“These days, though, I am more relaxed about my writing and about life in general,” says Elizabeth. “I mind less about a lot of things. I wonder if I am going to be upset when I reach 40. In ways I feel quite excited by it.”
Things I want my daughter to Know is so perceptive on the fall out of divorce on adult children, that it comes as a surprise to learn that Elizabeth’s parents are still together, and that she hadn’t been married before.
“I am married to a man who is divorced,” she says. “David is a publisher, and is 18 years older than me. He has brought such patience wisdom and knowledge to this marriage, but I think the divorce did terrible things to my stepson.
“The embarrassment of Lisa and Jennifer when their mother is pregnant is based on my stepson William. He was 16 when I was pregnant with Tallulah. It meant that his father was having sex with me. He was so revolted and horrified that he could hardly bear to be in the same room as me.”
Elizabeth recently moved from her dream house in Surrey to New York. She loves it.
“I’ve been there for 18 months. We live in the middle of Manhattan. It is clean; safe, and can be easily navigated. New York is rich in parks and facilities like museums. We all love it.
“I feel so settled there, that I am setting my next book there. I have a British heroine who lives in New York. It’s about the residents of an apartment block and its provisional title is ‘Love Storeys- because it tells three or four love stories of the people who live there.”
Isn’t Elizabeth a little worried though, that her mother might dislike it? Given that the third book she so disliked was also about romantic love?
“She will just have to get over it,” says Elizabeth. “And going on current form she won’t get to read it. She read the first in chunks as I wrote it; the second in manuscript; the third in proof and the fourth when it was in the shops. So each time, she is waiting until further down the line.”
Every time Elizabeth starts a novel, she tells herself she will write it in chronological order. But that never happens.
“I don’t write in linear fashion,” she says. “I write episodically. I write hundreds of short stories that have to be linked together with a narrative.
“It’s a tricky way to write and I have tried to change. But I do know where the book is going, because the plot is in my head. One day I might be in the mood to write love scenes; the next I’ll write a fight or a long discussion. It doesn’t work any other way for me.”
Elizabeth if quietly pleased with her latest novel.
“We could all do with thinking of the things we want to tell our daughters,” she muses. “We should all express ourselves more than we do with the people we love. I have heard someone say, so many times, ‘I wish I had had that conversation with my parents. And now it’s too late.’
“Somebody asked me if this book was a love letter to my daughters. I said, ‘I don’t know about that.’ But I think it might be a love letter to my mum.”
Things I want my Daughter to Know by Elizabeth Noble is published by Michael Joseph at 19.75 euro.
© Sue Leonard. 2008.
Interviewed by Sue Leonard.
Published in The Irish Examiner. April 2008.
Elizabeth Noble’s ten year old daughter has been learning the facts of life. She’s at a Catholic school in New York, and asked her mother if it was true that you can only get pregnant if you are married.
Taking a deep breath, Elizabeth explained that a woman can get pregnant every time she has sex with a man. The conversation, though, did not end there.
“Tallulah said, ‘so you and Daddy have done it more than twice then,’” recounts Elizabeth with a laugh. “And I said, ‘Yes. A few more times.
“When she asked if I had done it with anyone apart from her father I thought, ‘I am not ready for that conversation right now!”
The English mum of two daughters is in Dublin to promote her fourth book. It’s called, ‘Things I want my Daughters to Know,’ and we’re drinking coffee in the Merrion Hotel as we discuss whether daughters should know their mother’s secrets.
It’s a dilemma for a character in Elizabeth’s book. Barbara, mum to four daughters has cancer, and knows that time is running out. She’s had a chequered life. Her first marriage failed, leaving her older children with unresolved issues. Her second; to a younger man, was blissful; but she has secrets.
“Lisa and Jennifer are in their thirties; Amanda in her twenties and Hannah is just 15. She feels that none of them are quite ‘set.’ None is in a really good place and there are things she wants to help them with. So she leaves them letters and a journal. Hoping that this way she can help them.”
Three of the letters are gentle declarations of love. But the one to the rootless Amanda tells a devastating secret that threatens to derail her life completely.
“Leaving that letter was deeply cowardly; it leaves Amanda with this emotional crevasse. I wanted to show Barbara was flawed. I didn’t want her to be totally idolised after her death,” says Elizabeth.
Elizabeth shot to fame when her first novel, ‘The Reading Group’ made number one in Britain. She writes movingly about friendship; about love, and the dilemmas women go through, and she makes you care. You will laugh; cry, and remember the characters long after you have put the novel down.
Why, though, did she decide to write about mothers and daughters?
“It is the most complicated relationship,” she says. “I am very close to my mother, but the bond is not without its dark side. We are alike; but we were raised differently. My mum’s mother was ill, and she had to, virtually, bring up her five siblings.
“She hasn’t tried to live through me; but she is aware that she could have done the things I have done. That has sometimes caused a struggle for her.”
Elizabeth studied English at Oxford, and worked in publishing before she turned to writing.
“Mum was a great support. But she didn’t like my third book,” says Elizabeth. “It was published when I was 37 and it completely floored me. I was devastated. I thought, ‘I am nearly 40. I have got my own children, but my mother’s approval is still vital to me.’
“She is pleased with this book and pleased with me for it. Big sighs of relief!” laughs Elizabeth. “But the most relieved is my husband, David. Because he has to mop up the aftermath.”
It’s not just her mother’s opinion that worries Elizabeth.
“Publication time makes me feel vulnerable,” she says. “It’s great when you get good reviews and feedback; it’s wonderful when you get good sales figures, but it’s the bad reviews that become imprinted on my brain.
“These days, though, I am more relaxed about my writing and about life in general,” says Elizabeth. “I mind less about a lot of things. I wonder if I am going to be upset when I reach 40. In ways I feel quite excited by it.”
Things I want my daughter to Know is so perceptive on the fall out of divorce on adult children, that it comes as a surprise to learn that Elizabeth’s parents are still together, and that she hadn’t been married before.
“I am married to a man who is divorced,” she says. “David is a publisher, and is 18 years older than me. He has brought such patience wisdom and knowledge to this marriage, but I think the divorce did terrible things to my stepson.
“The embarrassment of Lisa and Jennifer when their mother is pregnant is based on my stepson William. He was 16 when I was pregnant with Tallulah. It meant that his father was having sex with me. He was so revolted and horrified that he could hardly bear to be in the same room as me.”
Elizabeth recently moved from her dream house in Surrey to New York. She loves it.
“I’ve been there for 18 months. We live in the middle of Manhattan. It is clean; safe, and can be easily navigated. New York is rich in parks and facilities like museums. We all love it.
“I feel so settled there, that I am setting my next book there. I have a British heroine who lives in New York. It’s about the residents of an apartment block and its provisional title is ‘Love Storeys- because it tells three or four love stories of the people who live there.”
Isn’t Elizabeth a little worried though, that her mother might dislike it? Given that the third book she so disliked was also about romantic love?
“She will just have to get over it,” says Elizabeth. “And going on current form she won’t get to read it. She read the first in chunks as I wrote it; the second in manuscript; the third in proof and the fourth when it was in the shops. So each time, she is waiting until further down the line.”
Every time Elizabeth starts a novel, she tells herself she will write it in chronological order. But that never happens.
“I don’t write in linear fashion,” she says. “I write episodically. I write hundreds of short stories that have to be linked together with a narrative.
“It’s a tricky way to write and I have tried to change. But I do know where the book is going, because the plot is in my head. One day I might be in the mood to write love scenes; the next I’ll write a fight or a long discussion. It doesn’t work any other way for me.”
Elizabeth if quietly pleased with her latest novel.
“We could all do with thinking of the things we want to tell our daughters,” she muses. “We should all express ourselves more than we do with the people we love. I have heard someone say, so many times, ‘I wish I had had that conversation with my parents. And now it’s too late.’
“Somebody asked me if this book was a love letter to my daughters. I said, ‘I don’t know about that.’ But I think it might be a love letter to my mum.”
Things I want my Daughter to Know by Elizabeth Noble is published by Michael Joseph at 19.75 euro.
© Sue Leonard. 2008.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Review. Bruce Arnold.
He That us Down Need fear No Fall.
By Bruce Arnold.
Published by Ashfield Press at 12.99 euro.
Published in The Irish Examiner. May 2008.
In this mesmerising memoir, Bruce Arnold tells of the love his father had for a teacher, Barbara Young; a love that lasted from 1951 until George Arnold’s death in 1975. The two never married. George had numerous, other affairs during this time, and he married and divorced twice. Yet the love between the two remained constant.
The teenage Bruce watched all this with increasing despair. He adored Barbara, and longed for the stability of her extended family, but he understood that his father’s precarious life and bouts of drinking made him a poor long term prospect.
Arnold could, so easily, have written a ‘misery memoir.’ His mother, who was never married to George, died when he was young; his father’s first marriage, and naval career having broken due to his unwise affair with his Admiral’s wife.
His brothers barely featured in his life, and his sisters were adopted. It was left to Bruce, as the favourite son, to look out for his father. And that was sometimes far from easy.
There are poignant moments. Arnold admits his frustration at the lack of stability away from boarding school.
‘I wanted an end to our peripatetic existence,’ he writes. ‘The uncertainty of it. The emotional impoverishment, the lack of friends…the sense of shame I felt at not having a permanent home and never knowing where I would be.’
Whist he longs for this; he never lays serious blame. Not only is this book a testament to George’s love for Barbara, told through their letters over the years. It’s a love letter from a son to his father too.
I loved the glimpses into Bruce Arnold’s teenage years. It’s wonderful to see how such a prominent man of words developed. Arnold shows us the passionate nature of teenage friendship; he shares his move from England to Trinity College Dublin; his student brush with the theatre; his early marriage to Mavis and his early career on The Irish Times.
We see the genesis for his early novels; and we share his, and Mavis’s devastation when their first child, Emma, dies suddenly.
In his prologue, Arnold says that when he thinks of his father, he does so ‘with laughter on his lips and tears in his eyes.’ Reading this sensitive portrait, the reader may well share these emotions.
© Sue Leonard. 2008. ends.
By Bruce Arnold.
Published by Ashfield Press at 12.99 euro.
Published in The Irish Examiner. May 2008.
In this mesmerising memoir, Bruce Arnold tells of the love his father had for a teacher, Barbara Young; a love that lasted from 1951 until George Arnold’s death in 1975. The two never married. George had numerous, other affairs during this time, and he married and divorced twice. Yet the love between the two remained constant.
The teenage Bruce watched all this with increasing despair. He adored Barbara, and longed for the stability of her extended family, but he understood that his father’s precarious life and bouts of drinking made him a poor long term prospect.
Arnold could, so easily, have written a ‘misery memoir.’ His mother, who was never married to George, died when he was young; his father’s first marriage, and naval career having broken due to his unwise affair with his Admiral’s wife.
His brothers barely featured in his life, and his sisters were adopted. It was left to Bruce, as the favourite son, to look out for his father. And that was sometimes far from easy.
There are poignant moments. Arnold admits his frustration at the lack of stability away from boarding school.
‘I wanted an end to our peripatetic existence,’ he writes. ‘The uncertainty of it. The emotional impoverishment, the lack of friends…the sense of shame I felt at not having a permanent home and never knowing where I would be.’
Whist he longs for this; he never lays serious blame. Not only is this book a testament to George’s love for Barbara, told through their letters over the years. It’s a love letter from a son to his father too.
I loved the glimpses into Bruce Arnold’s teenage years. It’s wonderful to see how such a prominent man of words developed. Arnold shows us the passionate nature of teenage friendship; he shares his move from England to Trinity College Dublin; his student brush with the theatre; his early marriage to Mavis and his early career on The Irish Times.
We see the genesis for his early novels; and we share his, and Mavis’s devastation when their first child, Emma, dies suddenly.
In his prologue, Arnold says that when he thinks of his father, he does so ‘with laughter on his lips and tears in his eyes.’ Reading this sensitive portrait, the reader may well share these emotions.
© Sue Leonard. 2008. ends.
Marrying in Haste,
Marrying in Haste. Is Sarkozy mad?
By Sue Leonard.
Published in The Irish Independent. February 2008.
Your eyes meet across a crowded room, and you just know. It’s the dream of women everywhere, but is love at first sight for real? Is it safe to propose after just weeks, or months of meeting someone? Or are those first signs of passion a delightful, but misleading illusion?
The world had watched in abject fascination as the French President Nicolas Sarkozy has wooed the top model Carla Bruni. In the wake of the divorce from his second wife Cecilia, the President didn’t waste a minute. The pair were married within just three months of their first meeting.
Could their love last? Or will it soon collapse and go the way of Sarkozy’s first two marriages? Will we soon be salivating over their divorce; eating up every detail; just as we are now gleefully watching the court antics of Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, who once convinced us that their love would last forever?
If a couple are in a mutually caring and supportive relationship a swift marriage can work; but you don’t really know someone until you have been with them for at least six months. Or so says Gerry Hickey, a psychotherapist and counsellor.
“People who go on first impressions can learn to repent,” he says. “People put on masks; they show their best sides at the start of a relationship. At around six months those masks begin to drop.
“People want to marry for all kinds of reasons,” he says. “If they are fulfilling someone else’s expectations and not their own; if they are marrying for image or the sake of appearances, or if they are needy and looking for the other person to meet those needs the marriage may run into trouble.
“In our society we are looking, increasingly, for instant gratification. It’s ‘I want it now.’ There’s a difference, though, between something and someone. We cannot control other people. They evolve in their own time and their own space.”
Often we mistake the other person’s motive. Men may be looking for sex, and women for love.
“They don’t always accurately assess what the situation is. People should see danger. Jumping into a relationship is not like buying a pair of shoes; people are non returnable.”
Being needy, Hickey says, makes people particularly vulnerable.
“If their expectations of the other person are high, and the relationship does not work out; if it was an illusion, they run the risk of being appallingly hurt. This could lead to reactive depression.”
The marriage might last for years, before the cracks start to show. Particularly if someone has, unwittingly compromised themselves from some intrinsic need.
“When they become older, and more confident they may turn round and say, ‘what did I settle with that for?’”
Just this week, Dr Gerard Clifford, the Auxiliary Bishop of Armagh urged couples to take time preparing properly for marriage.
“Marriage is a vocation,” he said. “And in other callings and vocations in life, years of formation and training are regarded as absolutely essential.”
It’s a sentiment with which many counsellors would concur. Lisa O’Hara, who runs marriage preparation courses with MRCS Counselling, says that, today, most couples have known each other for at least two years before they tie the knot.
“It takes that time to organise the wedding,” she says. “And many couples live together for quite a while first. They may even have children.”
Even so, she feels that a pre-marriage course is absolutely essential.
“We fall in love with perfection,” she says. “We project that perfection onto somebody else, but what happens when that starts to fall away? Do you still like the person?
“How do they react with change? What happens in times of stress, when you move house, have a baby or when somebody dies? Are they then easy to live with?
“The key to relationship success is to explore what each of them expects from the relationship. What happens when their needs are not met? Do they withdraw, get angry, or do they deal with the issue? We try to normalise the couple’s dynamics.”
It helps too, to normalise the idea of counselling for couples.
“Often certain issues will come up in a pre-marriage course that need sorting,” says Lisa. “And the couples may come back to work on them further at a later date. They know there is help here for them.”
Jeannine Parle met Damien back in August 2003. She was over from America at the time, spending a week with a church mission.
“We spent a few days together and got on really well,” she says. “But we were both young. I was 23 and Damien was just 20.
“I went home to Los Angeles, where I was teaching kindergarten, and we emailed each other a lot. Then we started talking on the phone. I was giving a surprise party for a mutual friend, and on a whim, Damien flew over for three weeks. That is when we fell in love.
“That was November. I knew I would visit Damien after Christmas, but then there were some signs that I could go for longer. My car payment was done; my credit cards were paid off, and the school where I was teaching pushed two classes into one.
“I moved to Ireland in December, staying with friends and seeing Damien whenever I could. It was hard. Neither of us had a car. But we knew that ‘this was it.’ In March he asked my parents for my hand in marriage; in April he proposed, and we were got married in September.
“Other people like to wait and make sure the person is right for them, but we both knew in our hearts that this was right. This was what we wanted to do.
“And it’s been wonderful. We live in the grounds of Ovoca Manor; a Christian retreat centre near Avoca in County Wicklow, where Damien works. We see each other several times a day and always have lunch together. We really love that.
“And we now have a beautiful little girl, Hannah. She is amazing. A great little kid and we live in this ideal situation. She will be two in April. We love being close to each other; seeing each other and raising our daughter together.”
Dan wasn’t so lucky. (Names changed to protect his children.) He fell madly in love with Sarah back in 1979. He was convinced that she was the one for him; so convinced, in fact, that he proposed to her six months after they met.
“We married six months after that,” says Dan. “The momentum of it all just took over. I did have some doubts, but not enough to stop me marrying her. The relationship was still good.
“We were young though,” he says. “We were both 23 when we met, and we were both still growing up. The marriage was good for about four years, but then our personalities started to develop. We grew out of each other. We didn’t agree on anything. If I said black she would say white. We found that we didn’t even like each other.
“We stayed together for ten years. The deal was done, and I wanted it to work. I thought that marriage was for life; I was going to stick at it, because that was the way I was reared. And besides, two children had come along.
“I met someone else after we had broken up, and we moved into together after six months. That relationship lasted longer than the first one. We had two children and only split up two years ago.”
© Sue Leonard. 2008. ends.
By Sue Leonard.
Published in The Irish Independent. February 2008.
Your eyes meet across a crowded room, and you just know. It’s the dream of women everywhere, but is love at first sight for real? Is it safe to propose after just weeks, or months of meeting someone? Or are those first signs of passion a delightful, but misleading illusion?
The world had watched in abject fascination as the French President Nicolas Sarkozy has wooed the top model Carla Bruni. In the wake of the divorce from his second wife Cecilia, the President didn’t waste a minute. The pair were married within just three months of their first meeting.
Could their love last? Or will it soon collapse and go the way of Sarkozy’s first two marriages? Will we soon be salivating over their divorce; eating up every detail; just as we are now gleefully watching the court antics of Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, who once convinced us that their love would last forever?
If a couple are in a mutually caring and supportive relationship a swift marriage can work; but you don’t really know someone until you have been with them for at least six months. Or so says Gerry Hickey, a psychotherapist and counsellor.
“People who go on first impressions can learn to repent,” he says. “People put on masks; they show their best sides at the start of a relationship. At around six months those masks begin to drop.
“People want to marry for all kinds of reasons,” he says. “If they are fulfilling someone else’s expectations and not their own; if they are marrying for image or the sake of appearances, or if they are needy and looking for the other person to meet those needs the marriage may run into trouble.
“In our society we are looking, increasingly, for instant gratification. It’s ‘I want it now.’ There’s a difference, though, between something and someone. We cannot control other people. They evolve in their own time and their own space.”
Often we mistake the other person’s motive. Men may be looking for sex, and women for love.
“They don’t always accurately assess what the situation is. People should see danger. Jumping into a relationship is not like buying a pair of shoes; people are non returnable.”
Being needy, Hickey says, makes people particularly vulnerable.
“If their expectations of the other person are high, and the relationship does not work out; if it was an illusion, they run the risk of being appallingly hurt. This could lead to reactive depression.”
The marriage might last for years, before the cracks start to show. Particularly if someone has, unwittingly compromised themselves from some intrinsic need.
“When they become older, and more confident they may turn round and say, ‘what did I settle with that for?’”
Just this week, Dr Gerard Clifford, the Auxiliary Bishop of Armagh urged couples to take time preparing properly for marriage.
“Marriage is a vocation,” he said. “And in other callings and vocations in life, years of formation and training are regarded as absolutely essential.”
It’s a sentiment with which many counsellors would concur. Lisa O’Hara, who runs marriage preparation courses with MRCS Counselling, says that, today, most couples have known each other for at least two years before they tie the knot.
“It takes that time to organise the wedding,” she says. “And many couples live together for quite a while first. They may even have children.”
Even so, she feels that a pre-marriage course is absolutely essential.
“We fall in love with perfection,” she says. “We project that perfection onto somebody else, but what happens when that starts to fall away? Do you still like the person?
“How do they react with change? What happens in times of stress, when you move house, have a baby or when somebody dies? Are they then easy to live with?
“The key to relationship success is to explore what each of them expects from the relationship. What happens when their needs are not met? Do they withdraw, get angry, or do they deal with the issue? We try to normalise the couple’s dynamics.”
It helps too, to normalise the idea of counselling for couples.
“Often certain issues will come up in a pre-marriage course that need sorting,” says Lisa. “And the couples may come back to work on them further at a later date. They know there is help here for them.”
Jeannine Parle met Damien back in August 2003. She was over from America at the time, spending a week with a church mission.
“We spent a few days together and got on really well,” she says. “But we were both young. I was 23 and Damien was just 20.
“I went home to Los Angeles, where I was teaching kindergarten, and we emailed each other a lot. Then we started talking on the phone. I was giving a surprise party for a mutual friend, and on a whim, Damien flew over for three weeks. That is when we fell in love.
“That was November. I knew I would visit Damien after Christmas, but then there were some signs that I could go for longer. My car payment was done; my credit cards were paid off, and the school where I was teaching pushed two classes into one.
“I moved to Ireland in December, staying with friends and seeing Damien whenever I could. It was hard. Neither of us had a car. But we knew that ‘this was it.’ In March he asked my parents for my hand in marriage; in April he proposed, and we were got married in September.
“Other people like to wait and make sure the person is right for them, but we both knew in our hearts that this was right. This was what we wanted to do.
“And it’s been wonderful. We live in the grounds of Ovoca Manor; a Christian retreat centre near Avoca in County Wicklow, where Damien works. We see each other several times a day and always have lunch together. We really love that.
“And we now have a beautiful little girl, Hannah. She is amazing. A great little kid and we live in this ideal situation. She will be two in April. We love being close to each other; seeing each other and raising our daughter together.”
Dan wasn’t so lucky. (Names changed to protect his children.) He fell madly in love with Sarah back in 1979. He was convinced that she was the one for him; so convinced, in fact, that he proposed to her six months after they met.
“We married six months after that,” says Dan. “The momentum of it all just took over. I did have some doubts, but not enough to stop me marrying her. The relationship was still good.
“We were young though,” he says. “We were both 23 when we met, and we were both still growing up. The marriage was good for about four years, but then our personalities started to develop. We grew out of each other. We didn’t agree on anything. If I said black she would say white. We found that we didn’t even like each other.
“We stayed together for ten years. The deal was done, and I wanted it to work. I thought that marriage was for life; I was going to stick at it, because that was the way I was reared. And besides, two children had come along.
“I met someone else after we had broken up, and we moved into together after six months. That relationship lasted longer than the first one. We had two children and only split up two years ago.”
© Sue Leonard. 2008. ends.
Interview. Joanna Trollope.
Joanna Trollope.
Interviewed by Sue Leonard.
Published in the Irish Examiner. March 2008.
At 64, Joanna Trollope looks amazing. And it’s not just her everlasting legs and whippet slim figure that make her so. It’s her air of utter serenity; her obvious contentment that make her stand out from the crowd.
“I revelled when I reached 60 and I have gone on revelling,” she tells me on a trip to Dublin to promote her latest novel ‘Friday Nights.’ “It’s a fantastic decade because society stops expecting anything from you. There is a freedom.”
This sense of settlement impacts on her writing. All 14 of Joanna’s contemporary novels have shown acute observation; in Friday Nights she shows an extraordinary tolerance of; and understanding for her multifaceted cast of characters.
A distant relation of Anthony Trollope, Joanna won a scholarship to Oxford University. She worked for the foreign office, and spent many years teaching before she began to write the historical novels that preceded her contemporary ones. She has been married twice, and now lives alone in London.
Passionate on the subject of women; their issues, relationships and work life balance, this time, Joanna has focused on friendship.
“Women have always needed women,” says Joanna. “It used to be their sister, like Jane Austen and Cassandra. When they married and lived three streets away from their mothers and sisters their families provided that intimacy. Now, though, that families are scattered all over the globe, instead of making friends out of our family we are making family out of our friends.”
As for Joanna, she has kept some friends for over thirty years. She has friends of all ages; and makes one or two a year; mainly younger ones.
“I have some friends of my mother’s age, in their eighties. They made a friend of me when they were at my stage. Once you are through the competitiveness of the fertile years you can relax, and look around you for a much greater variety of friends.”
In Friday Nights, she has taken six, very different women, who became friends through Eleanor; a retired career woman who noticed some lonely mums on her street, and decided to get them together.
Soon a group has formed. There are two single mothers and three singletons, all of whom work. Ranging in age from the recalcitrant Jules; a wannabe DJ of 22, to the ageing Eleanor, they all find solace from their Friday night get-togethers.
“In those fertile years those intense friendships are a marvellous opportunity for support, unity and mutual sympathy; but there’s a terrifying opportunity to sabotage the friendship over a man.”
Joanna demonstrates this, in the novel, by introducing Jackson; an enigmatic man who is shown off to the group by Paula, one of the single mums. And gradually, everything changes.
“The novel hasn’t a narrative thread; it’s really watching something unravel,” says Joanna. “You take this group of six women; throw in the catalyst and watch the group break up. It’s like watching an explosion happening in very slow motion.”
Eleanor is at the centre; watching the other women as they make muddles of their lives. Joanna, like the fictitious Eleanor has also become a more reflective observer of late. She often takes herself to the Café Nero in the King’s Road to relax after a day’s writing, and to eavesdrop on the life around her.
“You don’t think. ‘my goodness there is a party going on there which I am not part of ,’ the way you did when you were younger,” she says. “You think ‘how absolutely riveting, there is a party going on and I’m going to watch it.’
“There is a lot of selfish immaturity going on among young women just now,” she muses. “I am rather horrified when I hear, ‘what about me in this?’ and women saying, ‘I am so angry.’ You hear that such a lot.”
Jackson inveigles himself into the lives of all Paula’s friends. He doesn’t seduce them; but one of them makes a play for him.
“I wanted that demonstration that men are not always bastards who treat women badly,” she says. “And that sometimes women behave in the most asinine ways around an attractive man. And they embarrass their children.”
The characters are, clearly, still in Joanna’s head. She talks about them; and particularly about the four children who populate the book with great tenderness. They feel real to the reader; so lovingly are they portrayed, with their individual quirks and worries.
Joanna has seven grandchildren between the ages of 9 and eighteen months. (Four blood ones and three step.)
“But my stepsons are very sweet about including me. I do observe the grandchildren, yes; you notice the boys when they start school suddenly not wanting to have the girly conversations about feelings and how people look. And when you mention girls it’s ‘yuck!’
“The research for this book was such fun,” she says with glee. “When I wrote ‘Brother and Sister’ the research was harrowing, because some of the stories about adoption were so painful, but for this one I researched house music and football.
“The clubbing was, of course, such fun, though I don’t want to go again; but football has become a passion. I read the sports press now, and I am an ardent Chelsea fan. I have been to the training ground and had my photograph taken with Drogba. My status with the grandchildren is now sky high.
“Writing, though is a kind of love hate thing. It is endless hard work; endless self discipline and denying yourself . I’m not complaining,” she explains, “just describing. I regard writing as a serious profession. It would be easy, at this stage to just go to Harvey Nichols. I tell myself, ‘this is a writing day.’
“It becomes harder too. The readership has been astonishing loyal for about 15 years, and there is a great anxiety about letting them down. And of letting myself down.” It worries her that, once a writer sells well, nobody tells them if their writing has slipped; or if they have fallen into bad habits. So she reads all her reviews with great attention.
“If I was a dancer I’d be going to classes; if I was a singer I’d go to a voice coach. You can learn an enormous amount from a review which will point out a mannerism you have slipped into, or where the book seems to have fallen down.”
She needn’t worry. Of all her books, Friday Nights is, I believe, the most accomplished. What, though, would she like her readers to take from it?
“I’d like them to take away a feeling of this extraordinary capacity women have for self reinvention,” she says. “And that friendship is to be found in the most unlikely and eccentric places and people.
“And, I think, that women have to be on their guard about how they treat their friends when a man is in the equation. Like money, you might need them. Neither money nor friends should be squandered heedlessly.
“I love it when I hear one of my novels has been chosen by a book club,” she says. “I like the idea of this book being a springboard for women to talk about friendship. I hope it gets them going.”
Friday Nights by Joanna Trollope is published by Bloomsbury at 19.99 euro.
© Sue Leonard. 2008.
Interviewed by Sue Leonard.
Published in the Irish Examiner. March 2008.
At 64, Joanna Trollope looks amazing. And it’s not just her everlasting legs and whippet slim figure that make her so. It’s her air of utter serenity; her obvious contentment that make her stand out from the crowd.
“I revelled when I reached 60 and I have gone on revelling,” she tells me on a trip to Dublin to promote her latest novel ‘Friday Nights.’ “It’s a fantastic decade because society stops expecting anything from you. There is a freedom.”
This sense of settlement impacts on her writing. All 14 of Joanna’s contemporary novels have shown acute observation; in Friday Nights she shows an extraordinary tolerance of; and understanding for her multifaceted cast of characters.
A distant relation of Anthony Trollope, Joanna won a scholarship to Oxford University. She worked for the foreign office, and spent many years teaching before she began to write the historical novels that preceded her contemporary ones. She has been married twice, and now lives alone in London.
Passionate on the subject of women; their issues, relationships and work life balance, this time, Joanna has focused on friendship.
“Women have always needed women,” says Joanna. “It used to be their sister, like Jane Austen and Cassandra. When they married and lived three streets away from their mothers and sisters their families provided that intimacy. Now, though, that families are scattered all over the globe, instead of making friends out of our family we are making family out of our friends.”
As for Joanna, she has kept some friends for over thirty years. She has friends of all ages; and makes one or two a year; mainly younger ones.
“I have some friends of my mother’s age, in their eighties. They made a friend of me when they were at my stage. Once you are through the competitiveness of the fertile years you can relax, and look around you for a much greater variety of friends.”
In Friday Nights, she has taken six, very different women, who became friends through Eleanor; a retired career woman who noticed some lonely mums on her street, and decided to get them together.
Soon a group has formed. There are two single mothers and three singletons, all of whom work. Ranging in age from the recalcitrant Jules; a wannabe DJ of 22, to the ageing Eleanor, they all find solace from their Friday night get-togethers.
“In those fertile years those intense friendships are a marvellous opportunity for support, unity and mutual sympathy; but there’s a terrifying opportunity to sabotage the friendship over a man.”
Joanna demonstrates this, in the novel, by introducing Jackson; an enigmatic man who is shown off to the group by Paula, one of the single mums. And gradually, everything changes.
“The novel hasn’t a narrative thread; it’s really watching something unravel,” says Joanna. “You take this group of six women; throw in the catalyst and watch the group break up. It’s like watching an explosion happening in very slow motion.”
Eleanor is at the centre; watching the other women as they make muddles of their lives. Joanna, like the fictitious Eleanor has also become a more reflective observer of late. She often takes herself to the Café Nero in the King’s Road to relax after a day’s writing, and to eavesdrop on the life around her.
“You don’t think. ‘my goodness there is a party going on there which I am not part of ,’ the way you did when you were younger,” she says. “You think ‘how absolutely riveting, there is a party going on and I’m going to watch it.’
“There is a lot of selfish immaturity going on among young women just now,” she muses. “I am rather horrified when I hear, ‘what about me in this?’ and women saying, ‘I am so angry.’ You hear that such a lot.”
Jackson inveigles himself into the lives of all Paula’s friends. He doesn’t seduce them; but one of them makes a play for him.
“I wanted that demonstration that men are not always bastards who treat women badly,” she says. “And that sometimes women behave in the most asinine ways around an attractive man. And they embarrass their children.”
The characters are, clearly, still in Joanna’s head. She talks about them; and particularly about the four children who populate the book with great tenderness. They feel real to the reader; so lovingly are they portrayed, with their individual quirks and worries.
Joanna has seven grandchildren between the ages of 9 and eighteen months. (Four blood ones and three step.)
“But my stepsons are very sweet about including me. I do observe the grandchildren, yes; you notice the boys when they start school suddenly not wanting to have the girly conversations about feelings and how people look. And when you mention girls it’s ‘yuck!’
“The research for this book was such fun,” she says with glee. “When I wrote ‘Brother and Sister’ the research was harrowing, because some of the stories about adoption were so painful, but for this one I researched house music and football.
“The clubbing was, of course, such fun, though I don’t want to go again; but football has become a passion. I read the sports press now, and I am an ardent Chelsea fan. I have been to the training ground and had my photograph taken with Drogba. My status with the grandchildren is now sky high.
“Writing, though is a kind of love hate thing. It is endless hard work; endless self discipline and denying yourself . I’m not complaining,” she explains, “just describing. I regard writing as a serious profession. It would be easy, at this stage to just go to Harvey Nichols. I tell myself, ‘this is a writing day.’
“It becomes harder too. The readership has been astonishing loyal for about 15 years, and there is a great anxiety about letting them down. And of letting myself down.” It worries her that, once a writer sells well, nobody tells them if their writing has slipped; or if they have fallen into bad habits. So she reads all her reviews with great attention.
“If I was a dancer I’d be going to classes; if I was a singer I’d go to a voice coach. You can learn an enormous amount from a review which will point out a mannerism you have slipped into, or where the book seems to have fallen down.”
She needn’t worry. Of all her books, Friday Nights is, I believe, the most accomplished. What, though, would she like her readers to take from it?
“I’d like them to take away a feeling of this extraordinary capacity women have for self reinvention,” she says. “And that friendship is to be found in the most unlikely and eccentric places and people.
“And, I think, that women have to be on their guard about how they treat their friends when a man is in the equation. Like money, you might need them. Neither money nor friends should be squandered heedlessly.
“I love it when I hear one of my novels has been chosen by a book club,” she says. “I like the idea of this book being a springboard for women to talk about friendship. I hope it gets them going.”
Friday Nights by Joanna Trollope is published by Bloomsbury at 19.99 euro.
© Sue Leonard. 2008.
Roadside Birth.
Roadside Birth.
By Sue Leonard.
Published in the Irish Independent. Health and Living 2008.
John and Patricia Keane from Kilbaha, County Clare, are thrilled with their latest arrival. Born on February 5th, little Ryan is thriving. But the couple are still reeling in shock. Because their third child was born on the roadside.
Patricia was booked into hospital in Limerick. And she had another week to go when she woke with pains at 1.10 am on February 5th.
“I rang the hospital and we got ready to go,” says Patricia. “The pains were coming every five our six minutes.”
As they were leaving for the 100 km journey, though, Patricia became just a little worried.
“I thought, ‘the last time I had this sort of pain I was going into the labour ward for an epidural,” she says.
“The road to Kilrush is not the best. It was 22 miles of bumps. Between the pains, and having to hang on to the car, there wasn’t time to panic. But by the time we got to Kilrush, I thought, ‘we are not going to make it.’ The pains were really close together.
“When my waters broke, I could feel the baby moving into place. I was in a complete panic. I thought, ‘I have never felt this before. I have always had an epidural. I told my husband, and he drove even faster. I could hear him cursing beside me.”
A part time farmer, John Keane is used to delivering cattle.
“But he was panicking,” says Patricia. “He was trying to ring 999, and 11811 for the number of the hospital. But we were in an area with no coverage. I said, ‘pull in.’ He opened the door, and literally caught the baby. I wrapped him in a towel, and said, ‘get to the hospital fast.’
“We stopped at Ennis hospital. The maternity unit was closed there 20 years ago, and the nurses weren’t trained in midwifery. They cut the cord, but the placenta wasn’t ready.
“The ambulance drive to Limerick was the worst part,” says Patricia. “It was painful and uncomfortable. I was shivering and in shock.”
The couple hadn’t initially, rung for an ambulance, but if they had, they would have discovered that there wasn’t one available. Staffing problems, that day, meant that two other women in labour were denied an ambulance; and there is no local emergency care.
All this makes the Keanes' angry.
“It would make me put off having another baby for a while,” says Patricia. “It would almost make me want to move to Limerick.”
Krysia Lynch, PRO with AIMS, a group lobbying for better maternity services, is appalled at the number of women forced to drive long distances in labour.
“The government is committed to centralisation, and they don’t seem to be doing anything about outreach and domiciliary care,” she says. “There are midwifery led units in Drogheda and Cavan, but we need them countrywide.
“There were once hundreds of local maternity hospitals, but they have all gone now. And more maternity hospitals are set to close in accordance with government policy.
“There is an appalling lack of choice for women in Ireland,” she says. “In Britain they can choose a consultant led unit; or choose from a wide range of domiciliary care. They can choose a birth centre too; there aren’t any in Ireland.”
Bridget Sheeran; an Independent Midwife working in County Cork did a study last year, asking women for their stories around birth.
“I interviewed six women; and each one said that distance was a problem,” says Sheeran. “They worried about when they should leave home; they worried about traffic and speeding; and they said it was horrendous having that stress and being in labour as well.
“There is a real fear around roadside birth,” she says. “And a fear about giving birth in the car. One woman held her baby’s head in for the 40 minutes it took to get to hospital; and they were going at speed; the journey normally took an hour and a half.
“All this needs to be debated,” she says. “There should be someone a woman in a rural area can call out; someone who can tell them how far advanced their labour is. At present they get diverted to a long term centre where there may, or may not be someone available with experience of midwifery.
“Women don’t want to arrive in hospital too early. They don’t want to be told to go home or to walk the corridors. It’s fine if you live in Cork City; but if you come from West Cork they tell you to stay in Cork with relatives or in a hotel. And that is not woman centred care. Doctors want a woman to be 4 cm dilated; and a woman can’t possibly tell when that will be.”
Co Wicklow mum of four, Laura O’Shea is appalled that so many women are giving birth by the roadside. She’s hoped that, by now, the HSE would be giving women the services they need, and are entitled to.
Laura’s first two children, Eimhín and Elisé were born safely in Holles Street. But Conall, now five, was in a bit of a hurry to be born.
“We were living in Brittas Bay at the time,” says Laura, who now lives in Arklow. “My pains started on a Saturday; I rang my mother in law and she came round to mind the older children. I was telling her what to do, when my waters broke. We rushed for the car.
“By the time we got to Rathnew I was in a blind panic. I got through to the domino midwife and she talked it all through with me. My husband Barry looked so scared. He was driving as fast as he dared.
“The midwife said, ‘tell me where you are and I’ll get an ambulance,’ but before I could tell her, the phone signal went. We were on our own.
“Barry was belting up the road and I could feel the baby’s head. I took my seatbelt off to crouch, and asked Barry to pull over, but he said, ‘put your seatbelt back on.’ He was panicking, and drove faster.
Conall was born, in the car, doing 80 at The Glen of the Downs.
“He wasn’t breathing and I panicked. I pulled him close to me. I prayed to God; I said, ‘please let him live,’ and then he breathed.
“We stopped at Loughlinstown Hospital and an ambulance took us to Holles Street. They wouldn’t let me hold the baby; that tore me apart. The ambulance guy was panicking that my placenta would come and he would not know what to do.”
When Laura became pregnant again, she asked the midwives what they planned to do.
“I assumed that appropriate services would be provided,” she says. “Maybe they’d send a midwife to escort me to hospital, but they kept saying, ‘you’ll be fine.’
“The only option, they said, was to take me in and induce me, but oxytocin can be dangerous for someone who delivers fast. The consultant agreed there was a high risk I’d not make the hospital and he wrote a letter to the HSE.
“We had a meeting with the manager of HSE in Wicklow; the head of the Public Health Nurses and the head of the ambulance services. They offered to make an ambulance available, but said it would come with an Emergency Medical Technician who may not have delivered a baby.
“I would be strapped in, unable to move, sit or turn on my side. When the head crowned, they would pull to the roadside and deliver the baby.”
Traumatised, Laura was interviewed on the Pat Kenny radio show. And all hell let loose.
“The hospital offered me a long term bed, but I had three other children at home. At one stage they offered childcare, but when I accepted that, the offer was withdrawn.
“I felt threatened. A midwife mentioned a child protection order; she later apologised, but the same morning a psychiatrist I had never met or spoken to, suggested that I was manic. There was a battle going on. My baby and I were secondary.”
Eoin was born in May 2005, at home after a labour lasting an hour and a half. An independent midwife delivered the baby as a favour to Laura.
“I could have paid for an Independent Midwife, but I’d wanted what I was entitled to,” says Laura. “The HSE is responsible for delivering appropriate maternity services. When I asked for my rights I felt threatened.
“I wanted to raise awareness of the issue because I wanted to help other pregnant women. It breaks my heart that the situation is even worse today. I want another baby badly,” says Laura, ‘but I don’t think I could go through all that again. If I have another baby, I could not contemplate having it in this country.”
© Sue Leonard. 2008.
ends.
By Sue Leonard.
Published in the Irish Independent. Health and Living 2008.
John and Patricia Keane from Kilbaha, County Clare, are thrilled with their latest arrival. Born on February 5th, little Ryan is thriving. But the couple are still reeling in shock. Because their third child was born on the roadside.
Patricia was booked into hospital in Limerick. And she had another week to go when she woke with pains at 1.10 am on February 5th.
“I rang the hospital and we got ready to go,” says Patricia. “The pains were coming every five our six minutes.”
As they were leaving for the 100 km journey, though, Patricia became just a little worried.
“I thought, ‘the last time I had this sort of pain I was going into the labour ward for an epidural,” she says.
“The road to Kilrush is not the best. It was 22 miles of bumps. Between the pains, and having to hang on to the car, there wasn’t time to panic. But by the time we got to Kilrush, I thought, ‘we are not going to make it.’ The pains were really close together.
“When my waters broke, I could feel the baby moving into place. I was in a complete panic. I thought, ‘I have never felt this before. I have always had an epidural. I told my husband, and he drove even faster. I could hear him cursing beside me.”
A part time farmer, John Keane is used to delivering cattle.
“But he was panicking,” says Patricia. “He was trying to ring 999, and 11811 for the number of the hospital. But we were in an area with no coverage. I said, ‘pull in.’ He opened the door, and literally caught the baby. I wrapped him in a towel, and said, ‘get to the hospital fast.’
“We stopped at Ennis hospital. The maternity unit was closed there 20 years ago, and the nurses weren’t trained in midwifery. They cut the cord, but the placenta wasn’t ready.
“The ambulance drive to Limerick was the worst part,” says Patricia. “It was painful and uncomfortable. I was shivering and in shock.”
The couple hadn’t initially, rung for an ambulance, but if they had, they would have discovered that there wasn’t one available. Staffing problems, that day, meant that two other women in labour were denied an ambulance; and there is no local emergency care.
All this makes the Keanes' angry.
“It would make me put off having another baby for a while,” says Patricia. “It would almost make me want to move to Limerick.”
Krysia Lynch, PRO with AIMS, a group lobbying for better maternity services, is appalled at the number of women forced to drive long distances in labour.
“The government is committed to centralisation, and they don’t seem to be doing anything about outreach and domiciliary care,” she says. “There are midwifery led units in Drogheda and Cavan, but we need them countrywide.
“There were once hundreds of local maternity hospitals, but they have all gone now. And more maternity hospitals are set to close in accordance with government policy.
“There is an appalling lack of choice for women in Ireland,” she says. “In Britain they can choose a consultant led unit; or choose from a wide range of domiciliary care. They can choose a birth centre too; there aren’t any in Ireland.”
Bridget Sheeran; an Independent Midwife working in County Cork did a study last year, asking women for their stories around birth.
“I interviewed six women; and each one said that distance was a problem,” says Sheeran. “They worried about when they should leave home; they worried about traffic and speeding; and they said it was horrendous having that stress and being in labour as well.
“There is a real fear around roadside birth,” she says. “And a fear about giving birth in the car. One woman held her baby’s head in for the 40 minutes it took to get to hospital; and they were going at speed; the journey normally took an hour and a half.
“All this needs to be debated,” she says. “There should be someone a woman in a rural area can call out; someone who can tell them how far advanced their labour is. At present they get diverted to a long term centre where there may, or may not be someone available with experience of midwifery.
“Women don’t want to arrive in hospital too early. They don’t want to be told to go home or to walk the corridors. It’s fine if you live in Cork City; but if you come from West Cork they tell you to stay in Cork with relatives or in a hotel. And that is not woman centred care. Doctors want a woman to be 4 cm dilated; and a woman can’t possibly tell when that will be.”
Co Wicklow mum of four, Laura O’Shea is appalled that so many women are giving birth by the roadside. She’s hoped that, by now, the HSE would be giving women the services they need, and are entitled to.
Laura’s first two children, Eimhín and Elisé were born safely in Holles Street. But Conall, now five, was in a bit of a hurry to be born.
“We were living in Brittas Bay at the time,” says Laura, who now lives in Arklow. “My pains started on a Saturday; I rang my mother in law and she came round to mind the older children. I was telling her what to do, when my waters broke. We rushed for the car.
“By the time we got to Rathnew I was in a blind panic. I got through to the domino midwife and she talked it all through with me. My husband Barry looked so scared. He was driving as fast as he dared.
“The midwife said, ‘tell me where you are and I’ll get an ambulance,’ but before I could tell her, the phone signal went. We were on our own.
“Barry was belting up the road and I could feel the baby’s head. I took my seatbelt off to crouch, and asked Barry to pull over, but he said, ‘put your seatbelt back on.’ He was panicking, and drove faster.
Conall was born, in the car, doing 80 at The Glen of the Downs.
“He wasn’t breathing and I panicked. I pulled him close to me. I prayed to God; I said, ‘please let him live,’ and then he breathed.
“We stopped at Loughlinstown Hospital and an ambulance took us to Holles Street. They wouldn’t let me hold the baby; that tore me apart. The ambulance guy was panicking that my placenta would come and he would not know what to do.”
When Laura became pregnant again, she asked the midwives what they planned to do.
“I assumed that appropriate services would be provided,” she says. “Maybe they’d send a midwife to escort me to hospital, but they kept saying, ‘you’ll be fine.’
“The only option, they said, was to take me in and induce me, but oxytocin can be dangerous for someone who delivers fast. The consultant agreed there was a high risk I’d not make the hospital and he wrote a letter to the HSE.
“We had a meeting with the manager of HSE in Wicklow; the head of the Public Health Nurses and the head of the ambulance services. They offered to make an ambulance available, but said it would come with an Emergency Medical Technician who may not have delivered a baby.
“I would be strapped in, unable to move, sit or turn on my side. When the head crowned, they would pull to the roadside and deliver the baby.”
Traumatised, Laura was interviewed on the Pat Kenny radio show. And all hell let loose.
“The hospital offered me a long term bed, but I had three other children at home. At one stage they offered childcare, but when I accepted that, the offer was withdrawn.
“I felt threatened. A midwife mentioned a child protection order; she later apologised, but the same morning a psychiatrist I had never met or spoken to, suggested that I was manic. There was a battle going on. My baby and I were secondary.”
Eoin was born in May 2005, at home after a labour lasting an hour and a half. An independent midwife delivered the baby as a favour to Laura.
“I could have paid for an Independent Midwife, but I’d wanted what I was entitled to,” says Laura. “The HSE is responsible for delivering appropriate maternity services. When I asked for my rights I felt threatened.
“I wanted to raise awareness of the issue because I wanted to help other pregnant women. It breaks my heart that the situation is even worse today. I want another baby badly,” says Laura, ‘but I don’t think I could go through all that again. If I have another baby, I could not contemplate having it in this country.”
© Sue Leonard. 2008.
ends.
Interview. David Park.
David Park.
Interviewed by Sue Leonard.
Published in the Irish Examiner. February 2008.
David Park yearns to be ‘a writer.’ His ambition is to lead a creative life where he could write a book from the core of himself; where the characters could live in the front of his brain.
Meanwhile the author of seven, highly acclaimed books; six novels and a collection of stories, continues to fit his writing around his main career as a teacher. Now 55, Park teaches in a mixed sex Grammar School in Down Patrick, Northern Ireland.
Park has been obsessed with narrative and language since he was a child. Studying English at Queen’s University, he always wanted to write a book; but making it his career was, and remains, a fantasy.
“People think that when you have written six books you have made a huge amount of money. The amount I have made from my writing would keep my family in a tent.”
We meet, in the library of The Clarence Hotel on a miserable January afternoon. Park isn’t well. He’s getting over a dose of the flu, and he coughs his way through the interview. He is, in fact, off sick from work.
“I couldn’t have taken a day off otherwise,” he says. “I’d be too embarrassed.”
This seems an extraordinary statement from such a well lauded writer; particularly when his latest novel, ‘The Truth Inspector’ is causing such excitement, and eliciting such wonderful reviews. But it sums up the man.
Park is small, slight and gently spoken. Clearly passionate about his subject; how the North can come to terms with the atrocities of the past, he is reluctant to say that he likes his book.
“The truthful answer is, I think I am pleased with it,” he says, after a drawn out pause. “But once a book is written it is not always in my consciousness. I am amazed and delighted with the way it has been received so far though. That is beyond expectation.
“I was in Chamonix on a walking holiday two summers ago when an email came through from Bloomsbury saying that they really liked the book. It was a nice moment but in true protestant style we went down and I had an orange juice and my wife had a small glass of beer.” He laughs. “We don’t really know how to do celebration.”
The Truth Commissioner focuses on a family’s struggle to find out what happened to a 15 year old, Conor Walshe, who disappeared in 1990. The narrative centres on four men; A Veteran Republican; a retired RUC Officer; a young man, who fled his IRA links and lives, illegally, in America, and the Truth Commissioner himself.
Park tells their individual stories; then brings the four together for the novel’s insightful, dramatic conclusion. The novel is as much concerned with the present, as with the secrets the men try to bury.
“People have described it is a political novel. I have never thought of it that way.” says Park. “I was more interested in the people. And as the characters began to evolve I became more aware of the complexities that lurk within every single one of us.
“It was important, if the novel was to work, that the characters were fully humanised. There has to be some understanding of who they are and how they got where they are.
“The big question for the North is how to come to terms with the past. How do we deal with the past in a way that does not damage or destabilise the future. It is a very difficult conundrum.
“I wrote the book three years ago. It was easy to predict that there would be some kind of assembly. That such an assembly is a central question, just as the book is being published, is serendipity.”
Park isn’t sure whether such a commission is a good idea. It is important, he feels, that victims should have access to the truth, but he feels it is naïve to imagine that the truth will bring healing.
“The truth is going to be painful; it will say ‘here is a work colleague who set up a work colleague; here is a neighbour who conspired to have a neighbour murdered. It will show that elements of the security forces conspired with the paramilitaries. And when you have a fractious, and immature political base, as we do in the North, the potential of these truths to destabilise, is, I think, enormous.”
In the novel, Park shows us the complexities of all the men involved. The hardest for him to empathise with was Francis Gilroy, the IRA Veteran who is now Minister for Children and Justice. Yet he is the best drawn character of all.
“He is the most fully formed in terms of his inner life,” Park agrees. “There was a slight temptation to do a hatchet job on him; to make him this hard faced, cold blooded calculating man, but he grew into this complexity of fidelity to a political faith. He was vulnerable, and was uncertain where you’d expect him to be certain.”
As for Stansfield, the snobbish philandering Truth Commissioner; Park says he got a vicarious pleasure from writing about him.
“It’s like all my life I have tried to be good, but suddenly I get this vicarious pleasure from being bad,” he says. “He is snobbish and selfish and says these terrible things about the North. Belfast offends him aesthetically.”
There is one characteristic that David shares with both Stansfield and Gilroy. He, like them, has a very strong love, and concern for his children.
“I do worry about them,” he says, albeit reluctantly. “Having teenagers, James 18, and Sophie 14, is very challenging. You need patience. Teenagers spend a huge amount of time in the virtual world. They live in a different sphere.”
Park doesn’t have time for research. He’s a little concerned that The Truth Commissioner has been bought for translation, by Romanian, where part of the book is set.
“What I know about Romania could be written on a postage stamp,” he says. He doesn’t plan either. “You have some signposts in your head, but nothing is predetermined.
“I wrote The Truth Commissioner by shutting myself away between eight and ten each night. I’d aim for 1,000 words. It’s like building a pyramid in tiny blocks. The book,” he says, “is all written from inside the character. It is their inner life you are writing about. That means that at some level you are seeing the world through their eyes.”
Park is desperate that the book will not be stuck into the confines of a book about Northern Ireland, or the troubles.
“It has to be universal,” he says. “In my mind it is not about the troubles. It is a book about what it is to be human.”
To date, Park’s literary life has been a quiet one. He’s had amazing reviews, but little public recognition. Someone said of his first book, that he writes tenderly about terrible things, and he liked that.
“I like to write about important things,” he says. “But I like to do that with a sense of humanity and tenderness. I like to write with grace.”
The Truth Commissioner by David Park is published by Bloomsbury at 14.99 euro.
© Sue Leonard. 2008.
ends.
Interviewed by Sue Leonard.
Published in the Irish Examiner. February 2008.
David Park yearns to be ‘a writer.’ His ambition is to lead a creative life where he could write a book from the core of himself; where the characters could live in the front of his brain.
Meanwhile the author of seven, highly acclaimed books; six novels and a collection of stories, continues to fit his writing around his main career as a teacher. Now 55, Park teaches in a mixed sex Grammar School in Down Patrick, Northern Ireland.
Park has been obsessed with narrative and language since he was a child. Studying English at Queen’s University, he always wanted to write a book; but making it his career was, and remains, a fantasy.
“People think that when you have written six books you have made a huge amount of money. The amount I have made from my writing would keep my family in a tent.”
We meet, in the library of The Clarence Hotel on a miserable January afternoon. Park isn’t well. He’s getting over a dose of the flu, and he coughs his way through the interview. He is, in fact, off sick from work.
“I couldn’t have taken a day off otherwise,” he says. “I’d be too embarrassed.”
This seems an extraordinary statement from such a well lauded writer; particularly when his latest novel, ‘The Truth Inspector’ is causing such excitement, and eliciting such wonderful reviews. But it sums up the man.
Park is small, slight and gently spoken. Clearly passionate about his subject; how the North can come to terms with the atrocities of the past, he is reluctant to say that he likes his book.
“The truthful answer is, I think I am pleased with it,” he says, after a drawn out pause. “But once a book is written it is not always in my consciousness. I am amazed and delighted with the way it has been received so far though. That is beyond expectation.
“I was in Chamonix on a walking holiday two summers ago when an email came through from Bloomsbury saying that they really liked the book. It was a nice moment but in true protestant style we went down and I had an orange juice and my wife had a small glass of beer.” He laughs. “We don’t really know how to do celebration.”
The Truth Commissioner focuses on a family’s struggle to find out what happened to a 15 year old, Conor Walshe, who disappeared in 1990. The narrative centres on four men; A Veteran Republican; a retired RUC Officer; a young man, who fled his IRA links and lives, illegally, in America, and the Truth Commissioner himself.
Park tells their individual stories; then brings the four together for the novel’s insightful, dramatic conclusion. The novel is as much concerned with the present, as with the secrets the men try to bury.
“People have described it is a political novel. I have never thought of it that way.” says Park. “I was more interested in the people. And as the characters began to evolve I became more aware of the complexities that lurk within every single one of us.
“It was important, if the novel was to work, that the characters were fully humanised. There has to be some understanding of who they are and how they got where they are.
“The big question for the North is how to come to terms with the past. How do we deal with the past in a way that does not damage or destabilise the future. It is a very difficult conundrum.
“I wrote the book three years ago. It was easy to predict that there would be some kind of assembly. That such an assembly is a central question, just as the book is being published, is serendipity.”
Park isn’t sure whether such a commission is a good idea. It is important, he feels, that victims should have access to the truth, but he feels it is naïve to imagine that the truth will bring healing.
“The truth is going to be painful; it will say ‘here is a work colleague who set up a work colleague; here is a neighbour who conspired to have a neighbour murdered. It will show that elements of the security forces conspired with the paramilitaries. And when you have a fractious, and immature political base, as we do in the North, the potential of these truths to destabilise, is, I think, enormous.”
In the novel, Park shows us the complexities of all the men involved. The hardest for him to empathise with was Francis Gilroy, the IRA Veteran who is now Minister for Children and Justice. Yet he is the best drawn character of all.
“He is the most fully formed in terms of his inner life,” Park agrees. “There was a slight temptation to do a hatchet job on him; to make him this hard faced, cold blooded calculating man, but he grew into this complexity of fidelity to a political faith. He was vulnerable, and was uncertain where you’d expect him to be certain.”
As for Stansfield, the snobbish philandering Truth Commissioner; Park says he got a vicarious pleasure from writing about him.
“It’s like all my life I have tried to be good, but suddenly I get this vicarious pleasure from being bad,” he says. “He is snobbish and selfish and says these terrible things about the North. Belfast offends him aesthetically.”
There is one characteristic that David shares with both Stansfield and Gilroy. He, like them, has a very strong love, and concern for his children.
“I do worry about them,” he says, albeit reluctantly. “Having teenagers, James 18, and Sophie 14, is very challenging. You need patience. Teenagers spend a huge amount of time in the virtual world. They live in a different sphere.”
Park doesn’t have time for research. He’s a little concerned that The Truth Commissioner has been bought for translation, by Romanian, where part of the book is set.
“What I know about Romania could be written on a postage stamp,” he says. He doesn’t plan either. “You have some signposts in your head, but nothing is predetermined.
“I wrote The Truth Commissioner by shutting myself away between eight and ten each night. I’d aim for 1,000 words. It’s like building a pyramid in tiny blocks. The book,” he says, “is all written from inside the character. It is their inner life you are writing about. That means that at some level you are seeing the world through their eyes.”
Park is desperate that the book will not be stuck into the confines of a book about Northern Ireland, or the troubles.
“It has to be universal,” he says. “In my mind it is not about the troubles. It is a book about what it is to be human.”
To date, Park’s literary life has been a quiet one. He’s had amazing reviews, but little public recognition. Someone said of his first book, that he writes tenderly about terrible things, and he liked that.
“I like to write about important things,” he says. “But I like to do that with a sense of humanity and tenderness. I like to write with grace.”
The Truth Commissioner by David Park is published by Bloomsbury at 14.99 euro.
© Sue Leonard. 2008.
ends.
Bouncing Bacm from a Breakdown.
Bouncing Back from a Breakdown.
By Sue Leonard.
Published in The Irish Independent, Health and Living.
Over 300,000 people suffer from depression in Ireland every year. Many hit rock bottom, and wonder if they will, ever, feel ‘normal’ again. It can hit anyone. Mann Booker Prize winner Ann Enright has talked of her breakdown; suffered when she was working in TV.
Alistair Campbell, who was Tony Blair’s press secretary hit rock bottom back in 1986 when he was 29. He has said that, in the end, the experience has made him a stronger person; more able to deal with his challenging job.
‘I was taken to the limit, really close to losing everything, at absolute breaking point. It was, in many ways, the worst thing that has ever happened to me, certainly the scariest,” he told The Daily Telegraph back in 2003. ‘But in other ways it was the making of me.’
Those are words that Gillian Roddie, now 27, can only agree with. She was just 22 when she was diagnosed with depression.
“I had my first, small breakdown in May 2002,” she says. “I was at Trinity College Dublin studying Zoology, and it was coming up to finals.
“A family member was having an operation, and there was a lot of stress from the exams. I had a fight with someone, and ended up lying on the floor, just wailing.”
Gillian didn’t get help; she picked herself up and took her finals. Then, buoyed up with success, she went off to Hawaii for the summer.
“I was working in a lab at the University of Hawaii, and I was scuba diving. It’s a beautiful island; it was a wonderful job, but I was still waking up, every morning, crying. Something was not adding up.
“So when I got home I went to my GP. She diagnosed me and gave me an antidepressant, Effexor XR 75. I remember feeling so relieved. I had a name for it. I was not going crazy but had something that other people had.”
The euphoria was short lived. That evening, chatting to other scuba diving instructors, a friend said that some of his relations were depressed.
“He said, ‘I wish they would just shut up and get on with it.’ That was when it hit home. I thought, ‘this is something that carries huge stigma.’”
Gillian then started a Phd in DCU. Living on the North side she felt lonely. She wasn’t enjoying the work, and was finding it hard to make friends with her colleagues.
“One day I started crying in the lab. People didn’t know how to cope. How could they?’ she says.
When her grandmother died, Gillian sank so low, that she took herself to her doctor in despair.
“I felt I wasn’t worthy of existing. It was such a low point. I didn’t know how to carry on. I couldn’t understand what was going on in my head,” she says. “I’m a gregarious person, always the life and soul.
“You feel idiotic trying to explain how you feel. You say, ‘I feel so low,’ and people say, ‘you will get over it,’ or ‘you will be fine tomorrow.’ Those phrases are like stabs to the heart.
“My GP said, ‘the darkest hour of the night is the one just before the dawn.’ It was the truth. That was my turning point. She changed my drug to Lexapro, and I had Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. I talked to one friend who understood, and I did a lot of thinking. I made decisions to change my life.”
The biggest change was to give up that Phd.
“That was heart wrenching. I felt like such a failure. I’ve always been an achiever. My parents didn’t put on pressure, but they were proud when I did well. I saw them and they said, ‘we don’t care what you do as long as it makes you happy.’ Having their support stopped me feeling guilty.”
Gillian left science altogether, and became a retail manager in Brown Thomas. She moved from Finglas, and now lives near where she grew up in Sandycove.
“The sea is magic. It soothes my soul.”
Eventually Gillian moved back to science, and has just completed a Masters at Trinity. She is off her medication; has survived a painful break-up, and is happy in a new relationship.
Part of her recovery is due to physical exercise.
“In 2004 I went to the gym to help increase my strength. I began to gain in confidence, and to lift weights. If I’d had a bad day the gym instantaneously made me feel better. I began to read about it; to work to a programme, and to take care of my diet.”
When a friend urged her to compete as a lifter, Gillian was sceptical. But she did it. And at her first competition, the National IDFPA in Castleblaney, she won the women’s unequipped championship, setting a new national record; a new EU record and 2 world records. She’s about to defend her record at the world championships.
These days Gillian monitors her emotional state.
“I had to stop making decisions based on what other people expected,” she says. “I’ve learned to make myself happy. Some people do not agree with the lifting, but it puts a smile on my face. It makes me alive and keeps me active. I feel on top of the world.”
Jenny- (name changed,) suffered from anxiety and depression for almost seven years. And it was a support group that helped her to regain a fulfilling life.
It all began when she was 18, and married with a young baby.
“I had a panic attack, and thought I was dying,” she says. I was consumed with the idea of death, and developed a phobia around it. My GP said I was suffering from anxiety and depression. He prescribed anti depressants, but I hadn’t a clue what depression meant.
“I was afraid to ask him what was wrong, in case it was a fatal illness. No one took the time to explain what was happening to me, or to find out why it was happening.
“I didn’t tell anyone what was wrong,” says Jenny. “I was afraid they would think I was crazy. I was taking 16 tablets a day, but I got worse. And when I was 22 I could not take anymore. I began thinking, compulsively, of suicide.”
Jenny found herself in a psychiatric hospital, being watched 24 hours a day. She assumed hospital would cure her, but when she left there, the crisis was over, but the cause of her anxieties had still not been addressed.
“My poor mum was frantic. She was desperate to find me help. She persuaded me to go to a support meeting with the organisation GROW. I didn’t want to go, but for her sake I did. And it was brilliant.
“My husband and family were supportive, but they did not understand me. It’s easier to relate to people who have been depressed themselves. I had stress management and counselling too; but it the support meeting was my turning point. That evening started my recovery.”
Within 2 ½ years Jenny came off her medication. She learned, through GROW’s 12 point plan, to think with her brains rather than her feelings. That has made all the difference.
“I had another child, learned to drive, and I went back to work,” she says. “Before my breakdown I never thought I was good enough. I’m a much, much stronger person now.”
Dr Michael Corry, a psychiatrist who founded www.depressiondialogues.ie, despairs at the way depression is treated in Ireland. The problem, he feels, is that depression is commonly categorised as an illness; and is too often treated with drugs, without the reason for the depression being investigated.
“To me it is not a disease,” he says. “It’s an emotional experience arising from the difficulties of living. It could be the loss of a loved one through death or separation; it might be sexual trauma or bullying; it could be financial setbacks. By calling it a disease you are alienating people from an emotion that should be explored. Happiness is an inside job.
“You can give depressed people pills to help them sleep, or an anti-depressant to give them a kick start; but the emotion is telling you that there is something in your life that needs sorting out. To give solely medication, which numbs the emotion is ethically and morally wrong,” he says. “It just isn’t appropriate. It’s like saying, ‘you are Prozac deficient.”
WHAT IS A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN.
· Nervous breakdown is a non-medical term used to describe a sudden, acute attack of depression or anxiety.
· The person is unable to function on day to day life.
· A breakdown can be caused by grief, unemployment, social stre4ss, bereavement, divorce or chronic insomnia.
· The sudden onset of clinical depression, bipolar disorder, psychosis. Post traumatic stress disorder, sever stress and anxiety might be described as a breakdown.
For help and information.
Aware – www.aware.ie
GROW- 1890 474474.
The Samaritans- www.samaritans.org 1850 60 90 90.
©Sue Leonard. 2008.
ends.
By Sue Leonard.
Published in The Irish Independent, Health and Living.
Over 300,000 people suffer from depression in Ireland every year. Many hit rock bottom, and wonder if they will, ever, feel ‘normal’ again. It can hit anyone. Mann Booker Prize winner Ann Enright has talked of her breakdown; suffered when she was working in TV.
Alistair Campbell, who was Tony Blair’s press secretary hit rock bottom back in 1986 when he was 29. He has said that, in the end, the experience has made him a stronger person; more able to deal with his challenging job.
‘I was taken to the limit, really close to losing everything, at absolute breaking point. It was, in many ways, the worst thing that has ever happened to me, certainly the scariest,” he told The Daily Telegraph back in 2003. ‘But in other ways it was the making of me.’
Those are words that Gillian Roddie, now 27, can only agree with. She was just 22 when she was diagnosed with depression.
“I had my first, small breakdown in May 2002,” she says. “I was at Trinity College Dublin studying Zoology, and it was coming up to finals.
“A family member was having an operation, and there was a lot of stress from the exams. I had a fight with someone, and ended up lying on the floor, just wailing.”
Gillian didn’t get help; she picked herself up and took her finals. Then, buoyed up with success, she went off to Hawaii for the summer.
“I was working in a lab at the University of Hawaii, and I was scuba diving. It’s a beautiful island; it was a wonderful job, but I was still waking up, every morning, crying. Something was not adding up.
“So when I got home I went to my GP. She diagnosed me and gave me an antidepressant, Effexor XR 75. I remember feeling so relieved. I had a name for it. I was not going crazy but had something that other people had.”
The euphoria was short lived. That evening, chatting to other scuba diving instructors, a friend said that some of his relations were depressed.
“He said, ‘I wish they would just shut up and get on with it.’ That was when it hit home. I thought, ‘this is something that carries huge stigma.’”
Gillian then started a Phd in DCU. Living on the North side she felt lonely. She wasn’t enjoying the work, and was finding it hard to make friends with her colleagues.
“One day I started crying in the lab. People didn’t know how to cope. How could they?’ she says.
When her grandmother died, Gillian sank so low, that she took herself to her doctor in despair.
“I felt I wasn’t worthy of existing. It was such a low point. I didn’t know how to carry on. I couldn’t understand what was going on in my head,” she says. “I’m a gregarious person, always the life and soul.
“You feel idiotic trying to explain how you feel. You say, ‘I feel so low,’ and people say, ‘you will get over it,’ or ‘you will be fine tomorrow.’ Those phrases are like stabs to the heart.
“My GP said, ‘the darkest hour of the night is the one just before the dawn.’ It was the truth. That was my turning point. She changed my drug to Lexapro, and I had Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. I talked to one friend who understood, and I did a lot of thinking. I made decisions to change my life.”
The biggest change was to give up that Phd.
“That was heart wrenching. I felt like such a failure. I’ve always been an achiever. My parents didn’t put on pressure, but they were proud when I did well. I saw them and they said, ‘we don’t care what you do as long as it makes you happy.’ Having their support stopped me feeling guilty.”
Gillian left science altogether, and became a retail manager in Brown Thomas. She moved from Finglas, and now lives near where she grew up in Sandycove.
“The sea is magic. It soothes my soul.”
Eventually Gillian moved back to science, and has just completed a Masters at Trinity. She is off her medication; has survived a painful break-up, and is happy in a new relationship.
Part of her recovery is due to physical exercise.
“In 2004 I went to the gym to help increase my strength. I began to gain in confidence, and to lift weights. If I’d had a bad day the gym instantaneously made me feel better. I began to read about it; to work to a programme, and to take care of my diet.”
When a friend urged her to compete as a lifter, Gillian was sceptical. But she did it. And at her first competition, the National IDFPA in Castleblaney, she won the women’s unequipped championship, setting a new national record; a new EU record and 2 world records. She’s about to defend her record at the world championships.
These days Gillian monitors her emotional state.
“I had to stop making decisions based on what other people expected,” she says. “I’ve learned to make myself happy. Some people do not agree with the lifting, but it puts a smile on my face. It makes me alive and keeps me active. I feel on top of the world.”
Jenny- (name changed,) suffered from anxiety and depression for almost seven years. And it was a support group that helped her to regain a fulfilling life.
It all began when she was 18, and married with a young baby.
“I had a panic attack, and thought I was dying,” she says. I was consumed with the idea of death, and developed a phobia around it. My GP said I was suffering from anxiety and depression. He prescribed anti depressants, but I hadn’t a clue what depression meant.
“I was afraid to ask him what was wrong, in case it was a fatal illness. No one took the time to explain what was happening to me, or to find out why it was happening.
“I didn’t tell anyone what was wrong,” says Jenny. “I was afraid they would think I was crazy. I was taking 16 tablets a day, but I got worse. And when I was 22 I could not take anymore. I began thinking, compulsively, of suicide.”
Jenny found herself in a psychiatric hospital, being watched 24 hours a day. She assumed hospital would cure her, but when she left there, the crisis was over, but the cause of her anxieties had still not been addressed.
“My poor mum was frantic. She was desperate to find me help. She persuaded me to go to a support meeting with the organisation GROW. I didn’t want to go, but for her sake I did. And it was brilliant.
“My husband and family were supportive, but they did not understand me. It’s easier to relate to people who have been depressed themselves. I had stress management and counselling too; but it the support meeting was my turning point. That evening started my recovery.”
Within 2 ½ years Jenny came off her medication. She learned, through GROW’s 12 point plan, to think with her brains rather than her feelings. That has made all the difference.
“I had another child, learned to drive, and I went back to work,” she says. “Before my breakdown I never thought I was good enough. I’m a much, much stronger person now.”
Dr Michael Corry, a psychiatrist who founded www.depressiondialogues.ie, despairs at the way depression is treated in Ireland. The problem, he feels, is that depression is commonly categorised as an illness; and is too often treated with drugs, without the reason for the depression being investigated.
“To me it is not a disease,” he says. “It’s an emotional experience arising from the difficulties of living. It could be the loss of a loved one through death or separation; it might be sexual trauma or bullying; it could be financial setbacks. By calling it a disease you are alienating people from an emotion that should be explored. Happiness is an inside job.
“You can give depressed people pills to help them sleep, or an anti-depressant to give them a kick start; but the emotion is telling you that there is something in your life that needs sorting out. To give solely medication, which numbs the emotion is ethically and morally wrong,” he says. “It just isn’t appropriate. It’s like saying, ‘you are Prozac deficient.”
WHAT IS A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN.
· Nervous breakdown is a non-medical term used to describe a sudden, acute attack of depression or anxiety.
· The person is unable to function on day to day life.
· A breakdown can be caused by grief, unemployment, social stre4ss, bereavement, divorce or chronic insomnia.
· The sudden onset of clinical depression, bipolar disorder, psychosis. Post traumatic stress disorder, sever stress and anxiety might be described as a breakdown.
For help and information.
Aware – www.aware.ie
GROW- 1890 474474.
The Samaritans- www.samaritans.org 1850 60 90 90.
©Sue Leonard. 2008.
ends.
Interview. Asne Seirstad.
Asne Seierstad.
Interviewed by Sue Leonard.
When she was 24, Asne Seierstad entered war torn Chechnya in a military plane. A stringer in Moscow, she felt compelled to see the reality behind the headlines.
Mixing with the families and the soldiers, she saw death and deprivation. And she, too was threatened. Escaping bullets, she was threatened with rape- or worse, by a drunk soldier brandishing a Kalashnikov.
Asne has since covered wars in Afghanistan; in Iraq and Kosovo but that first experience was the most dangerous and foolhardy.
“It was probably the most scary thing I’ve ever done, but also the most interesting,” she tells me, on a trip to Dublin to publicise her book about Chechnya.
“We were travelling across front lines, because they were everywhere. And we weren’t restricted to talking to one side or the other. We were around both sides. When that gun was pointing at my stomach I was thinking, ‘I want to get out of here. I want to get home. This is not my war;’ but afterwards, when the situation is not so bad you forget about it.”
Horrified, and a touch traumatised, Asne felt involved with the Chechnyan cause.
“I became almost anti-Russian,” she says. “Back in Moscow, I became depressed. Real life was in the mountains, where people were waging a life and death struggle.”
I first met Seierstad five years ago, just after her landmark book; The Bookseller of Kabul had been published. She hadn’t, yet, been threatened with a law case by the bookseller. Beautiful, and focused, she came across as a little naïve; though thoroughly idealistic and passionate about her cause.
Although she expressed a wish for a family, somewhere in the future, she hadn’t, back then, time for relationships – so set was she on seeing all the worlds’ trouble spots.
Today, beautiful in a black and white dress with high boots, she is softer; more reflective and poised. Happiness radiates from her. She’s expecting a baby with her boyfriend of a year; Norwegian Composer Trygue Seim.
The Angel of Grozny tells Asne’s story from 1996; but concentrates more on her return to Chechnya a decade later. Travelling illegally, Asne found destruction, continuing violence and heartbreaking despair.
“I was running around listening to the stories of human rights abuses. I was meeting the mothers who had lost all their sons; a man who had killed his sister for ‘honour.’ I was hearing the whole truth; the stories of killing and torture; and the disappeared.
“But all the tragic stories were the same. All the terror read like an amnesty report. I felt ‘there is no book.’ I didn’t know what to do.
“I’d decided to write the book in 2005,” she says. “I saw this movie about an orphanage in Chechnya. I was working on a book on America at the time, but that movie changed everything. I had to go and find out what had happened in Chechnya; I had to find out the effect of the war on the people.
“I felt a sense of duty. ‘The Bookseller of Kabul sold 3 million copies in 38 languages. It had given me a voice. I had to use that.”
Asne decided to go to an orphanage in the hope that children’s stories will meld the book. She meets, and lives for a time with Hadijat- the Angel of the title. She and her husband Malik had rescued some homeless children during the post war chaos. When Asne met the couple, they were running a liberal, humane orphanage for many children who’d been brutalised by the war.
In the book, Asne concentrates on Timor and Liana, half siblings who’d been abused by an uncle when their parents and grandparents had been killed. The book opens with Timur, living wild; killing dogs cats and pigeons, because it gives him some kind of comfort.
“Timur’s heart is so full with revenge,” says Asne. “He wanted to avenge everybody who had been bad to him. He says, ‘I am full of evil. I have the fire of evil inside me. He has been so messed by brutality; he has never been treated well, so that is how he responds to the world.
“What will that lead to in later life? What will happen if he gets hold of a gun? It’s that whole thing of destroying a childhood. You can never mend that; never get it back. Unless he gets treatment, which, it seems, he won’t.”
Liana feels compelled to steal. She takes the bread money, then spends it on ice creams for all the children. Asne tries to teach Liana, but she seems unable to learn.
“I have read about children who have been abused or in war having a lack of concentration; a lack of learning abilities, and Liana made me understand why.
“I thought, ‘of course she can’t learn; she has spent so much time trying not to remember the abuse that she has lost the ability to remember.”
It was hard, Asne says, getting the children to talk.
“I needed patience.” That wasn’t the case when, on an official visit, she was granted an interview with the President Ramzan Kadyrov; he was happy to talk, but brilliant at evading Asne’s more searching questions.
“It was like meeting a child,” says Asne. “He moves when he talks. He is restless, and he keeps referencing beauty contests. He is probably shrewd,” she adds. “He must be clever to keep everyone down; to be so brutal.”
Asne paints a bleak picture.
“I feel so sad,” she says. “It is much harder to mend the result of war than to prevent a war. In the mid nineties Chechnya was not, yet destroyed. The people were united against the enemy. Now society is morally and socially destructive. Former neighbours are standing against each other. Chechnynans take their own people to torture chambers. They took a grandmother. Why would they?”
The whole process of writing the book has been exhaustive.
“I struggled with it,” says Asne. “First with the logistics of how to get there; and then people were so afraid; they were afraid to talk and tell their stories. It was hard too, to put the book together.
“I spent two years writing it. There were times I thought of giving up; at one time I did give up. IT was hard to explain everything without overdoing it. Now I am proud of it. I think it is my best book.”
Hoping to spread awareness, Asne doesn’t imagine her book will change things in Russia.
“I don’t think they will take it seriously. They will say it is just Western propaganda” she predicts.
But in one way, at least she will change some lives.
“I have bought some land for the orphanage so that they can build a bakery,” she says. “That way Liana can learn a skill. She’s clever, but she will never get to college. Perhaps she can become the best baker in Chechnya.”
Asne says that her travels are not, altogether, over. One day, she and Trygue Seim hope to take their family to live in Egypt. For now, though, Asne intends to settle home in Norway.
“I need a long rest,” she says. “To write Angel of Grozny I had to forget about myself and go into those other people’s lives. Afterwards you have to regain a sense of yourself. And that,” she says, “takes time.”
The Angel of Grozny by Asne Seierstad is published by Virago at 22.80 euro.
© Sue Leonard. 2008. ends.
Interviewed by Sue Leonard.
When she was 24, Asne Seierstad entered war torn Chechnya in a military plane. A stringer in Moscow, she felt compelled to see the reality behind the headlines.
Mixing with the families and the soldiers, she saw death and deprivation. And she, too was threatened. Escaping bullets, she was threatened with rape- or worse, by a drunk soldier brandishing a Kalashnikov.
Asne has since covered wars in Afghanistan; in Iraq and Kosovo but that first experience was the most dangerous and foolhardy.
“It was probably the most scary thing I’ve ever done, but also the most interesting,” she tells me, on a trip to Dublin to publicise her book about Chechnya.
“We were travelling across front lines, because they were everywhere. And we weren’t restricted to talking to one side or the other. We were around both sides. When that gun was pointing at my stomach I was thinking, ‘I want to get out of here. I want to get home. This is not my war;’ but afterwards, when the situation is not so bad you forget about it.”
Horrified, and a touch traumatised, Asne felt involved with the Chechnyan cause.
“I became almost anti-Russian,” she says. “Back in Moscow, I became depressed. Real life was in the mountains, where people were waging a life and death struggle.”
I first met Seierstad five years ago, just after her landmark book; The Bookseller of Kabul had been published. She hadn’t, yet, been threatened with a law case by the bookseller. Beautiful, and focused, she came across as a little naïve; though thoroughly idealistic and passionate about her cause.
Although she expressed a wish for a family, somewhere in the future, she hadn’t, back then, time for relationships – so set was she on seeing all the worlds’ trouble spots.
Today, beautiful in a black and white dress with high boots, she is softer; more reflective and poised. Happiness radiates from her. She’s expecting a baby with her boyfriend of a year; Norwegian Composer Trygue Seim.
The Angel of Grozny tells Asne’s story from 1996; but concentrates more on her return to Chechnya a decade later. Travelling illegally, Asne found destruction, continuing violence and heartbreaking despair.
“I was running around listening to the stories of human rights abuses. I was meeting the mothers who had lost all their sons; a man who had killed his sister for ‘honour.’ I was hearing the whole truth; the stories of killing and torture; and the disappeared.
“But all the tragic stories were the same. All the terror read like an amnesty report. I felt ‘there is no book.’ I didn’t know what to do.
“I’d decided to write the book in 2005,” she says. “I saw this movie about an orphanage in Chechnya. I was working on a book on America at the time, but that movie changed everything. I had to go and find out what had happened in Chechnya; I had to find out the effect of the war on the people.
“I felt a sense of duty. ‘The Bookseller of Kabul sold 3 million copies in 38 languages. It had given me a voice. I had to use that.”
Asne decided to go to an orphanage in the hope that children’s stories will meld the book. She meets, and lives for a time with Hadijat- the Angel of the title. She and her husband Malik had rescued some homeless children during the post war chaos. When Asne met the couple, they were running a liberal, humane orphanage for many children who’d been brutalised by the war.
In the book, Asne concentrates on Timor and Liana, half siblings who’d been abused by an uncle when their parents and grandparents had been killed. The book opens with Timur, living wild; killing dogs cats and pigeons, because it gives him some kind of comfort.
“Timur’s heart is so full with revenge,” says Asne. “He wanted to avenge everybody who had been bad to him. He says, ‘I am full of evil. I have the fire of evil inside me. He has been so messed by brutality; he has never been treated well, so that is how he responds to the world.
“What will that lead to in later life? What will happen if he gets hold of a gun? It’s that whole thing of destroying a childhood. You can never mend that; never get it back. Unless he gets treatment, which, it seems, he won’t.”
Liana feels compelled to steal. She takes the bread money, then spends it on ice creams for all the children. Asne tries to teach Liana, but she seems unable to learn.
“I have read about children who have been abused or in war having a lack of concentration; a lack of learning abilities, and Liana made me understand why.
“I thought, ‘of course she can’t learn; she has spent so much time trying not to remember the abuse that she has lost the ability to remember.”
It was hard, Asne says, getting the children to talk.
“I needed patience.” That wasn’t the case when, on an official visit, she was granted an interview with the President Ramzan Kadyrov; he was happy to talk, but brilliant at evading Asne’s more searching questions.
“It was like meeting a child,” says Asne. “He moves when he talks. He is restless, and he keeps referencing beauty contests. He is probably shrewd,” she adds. “He must be clever to keep everyone down; to be so brutal.”
Asne paints a bleak picture.
“I feel so sad,” she says. “It is much harder to mend the result of war than to prevent a war. In the mid nineties Chechnya was not, yet destroyed. The people were united against the enemy. Now society is morally and socially destructive. Former neighbours are standing against each other. Chechnynans take their own people to torture chambers. They took a grandmother. Why would they?”
The whole process of writing the book has been exhaustive.
“I struggled with it,” says Asne. “First with the logistics of how to get there; and then people were so afraid; they were afraid to talk and tell their stories. It was hard too, to put the book together.
“I spent two years writing it. There were times I thought of giving up; at one time I did give up. IT was hard to explain everything without overdoing it. Now I am proud of it. I think it is my best book.”
Hoping to spread awareness, Asne doesn’t imagine her book will change things in Russia.
“I don’t think they will take it seriously. They will say it is just Western propaganda” she predicts.
But in one way, at least she will change some lives.
“I have bought some land for the orphanage so that they can build a bakery,” she says. “That way Liana can learn a skill. She’s clever, but she will never get to college. Perhaps she can become the best baker in Chechnya.”
Asne says that her travels are not, altogether, over. One day, she and Trygue Seim hope to take their family to live in Egypt. For now, though, Asne intends to settle home in Norway.
“I need a long rest,” she says. “To write Angel of Grozny I had to forget about myself and go into those other people’s lives. Afterwards you have to regain a sense of yourself. And that,” she says, “takes time.”
The Angel of Grozny by Asne Seierstad is published by Virago at 22.80 euro.
© Sue Leonard. 2008. ends.
Anita Desai.
Anita Desai.
Interviewed by Sue Leonard.
Writing, to Anita Desai, is as instinctive as breathing. She began to write as soon as she knew how to join the letters of the alphabet. As a child growing up in India, she wrote descriptive pieces, essays and stories. Some of them were published.
“They got published in a children’s magazine, and that gave me a sense of being a writer,” the 71 year old tells me on the phone from a room in Trinity College Dublin. “The family used to talk of me as the writer in the family. And that gave me a sense of vocation. I never thought of doing anything else.”
Writers back then, though, were generally not visible in the way they are today.
“Writers were books on the shelves; not people,” she says. “But I was very fortunate. When I went to University I did begin to meet writers. I had a neighbour; a Polish, English woman who was very kind and hospitable to me. She was the writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. She made me realise writers were actual people living ordinary lives.”
Anita’s first novel, Cry The Peacock, was published when she was 25. But it was a struggle. Back then Indian publishers didn’t take chances on native writers, preferring to publish text books, or to reprint Classics from England and America. Eventually she found an English publisher.
“Things have changed so much; the publishing scene is very lively now,” she says. “Suddenly the publishers have realised there are Indian writers that readers all round the world are interested in.”
Described as India’s finest writer in English, Anita Desai is at Trinity College to deliver the Hely-Hutchinson Memorial Lecture on the subject of multiculturalism. It’s a subject close to her heart.
A prize winning novelist, short story writer, and children’s writer, Desai’s family spoke several languages; her mother was German, and in her writing she has drawn parallels between lives lived in different cultures.
When she began writing, such high profile appearances would have been unthinkable.
“I would have been terrified,” she says. “I wasn’t a very social person. Having children, and being so deeply involved in the life of literature, what little social life I had was not congenial to me. I didn’t know any writers and nobody talked about books.
“If someone heard that you had a book out they would say, ‘oh, what a nice hobby.’ So I kept it very much to myself. My four children saw this and said they never wanted to write. They said, ‘you live such a boring life. We want to do far more exciting things.”
The youngest, Kiran, decided to study Environmental Studies at college.
“I got wonderful letters from Kiran at that time. I used to say that she should expand them and make something of them. She never responded to that. But some of the professors in the college recognised her writing talent and they were the ones to encourage her to give up the sciences and take up writing instead.”
Anita was thrilled. How, though, did she feel when Kiran won the Booker prize for The Inheritance of Loss? An award she, herself, had been shortlisted for three times?
“It was a wonderful moment; there was a sense of fulfilment,” she says. “I shared a writing life with Kiran and I had the feel of this book growing slowly; mostly under my roof.
“It had been a hard eight years for her. She had little support or encouragement, really, and none at all from anyone in the publishing world. So it was a triumph I could share with her. I am so happy for her.”
The first of Anita’s Booker nominations came in 1980 with Clear Light of Day. Set in Old Delhi in the time preceding partition, it is a sumptuous depiction of a family battling old jealousies. Reading it, one feels subsumed into their world. It’s a glorious read.
“That is probably the most autobiographical book that I have written,” she says. “It is not about my sisters and myself, but there is that sense of family and an old house. And Old Delhi at that time is one that I knew.”
Since then, Desai has veered away from the domestic tale.
“I have written bits and pieces about Italy and Germany. And my most recent book, The Zig Zag Way, published in 2004, was set entirely in a foreign country. And that was Mexico.
“I was very hesitant and tentative about the project because it was based, very much on travel and research rather than on my experience and knowledge of a place. It was set in Mexico’s past.
“It was enjoyable. It took me out of myself. Reading the history I found fascinating, because it has such parallels with Indian history.”
Anita can see parallels between India and Ireland too. “Religion has had a huge effect on the psyche of people in both countries,” she muses. “And the colonial past is another thing that we share.”
Anita’s lecture ‘Let us be Various,’ was a fascinating exploration into the way language affects writing, as well as contemporary life. She explained that, in choosing English to write in, she had to suppress her other languages. This, she explained, led to a certain linguistic unease.
Her solution was to incorporate other languages. In ‘In Custody,’ for example, we meet a poet of Urdu. And in Baumbartner’s Bombay she writes about a German Jewish refugee who ends up in India during the war and stays there.
Gentle, and softly spoken, Desai holds the audience with ease. But then, she is now used to talking in a lecture theatre, and holds several fellowships.
“At 45 I left India, and the domestic scene,” she says. “I taught, first in Cambridge England, then in Cambridge Massachusetts. That has trained me to come out of myself. ”
At present, Desai divides her time between India, America and Mexico. Since The Zig Zag Way was published, she has been writing shorter pieces such as introductions, and book reviews. Is her Canon complete?
“It’s complicated,” she says. “When I am not writing, I do miss it. I feel that the most important part of myself is not at peace. But I am not sure that I will write another book. One runs out of the energy required as one grows older. And it does require an enormous amount of energy to create a world that does not exist.
“And then India has always been my subject, and when I return now I find it so changed. It does not belong to me in the same way. It is no longer my subject. I do feel it requires younger writers and a newer generation to tackle that.”
I tell her that I’ve heard it said that a writing life lasts 40 years.
“I wouldn’t be that precise,” she says, “but I do feel that a writer starts writing with a certain amount of material within them. That has to be described, and after that it is becomes more difficult.
“I find it quite difficult to find new material that is quite as interesting; quite as exciting, as that that has come before.”
© Sue Leonard. 2008. ends.
Interviewed by Sue Leonard.
Writing, to Anita Desai, is as instinctive as breathing. She began to write as soon as she knew how to join the letters of the alphabet. As a child growing up in India, she wrote descriptive pieces, essays and stories. Some of them were published.
“They got published in a children’s magazine, and that gave me a sense of being a writer,” the 71 year old tells me on the phone from a room in Trinity College Dublin. “The family used to talk of me as the writer in the family. And that gave me a sense of vocation. I never thought of doing anything else.”
Writers back then, though, were generally not visible in the way they are today.
“Writers were books on the shelves; not people,” she says. “But I was very fortunate. When I went to University I did begin to meet writers. I had a neighbour; a Polish, English woman who was very kind and hospitable to me. She was the writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. She made me realise writers were actual people living ordinary lives.”
Anita’s first novel, Cry The Peacock, was published when she was 25. But it was a struggle. Back then Indian publishers didn’t take chances on native writers, preferring to publish text books, or to reprint Classics from England and America. Eventually she found an English publisher.
“Things have changed so much; the publishing scene is very lively now,” she says. “Suddenly the publishers have realised there are Indian writers that readers all round the world are interested in.”
Described as India’s finest writer in English, Anita Desai is at Trinity College to deliver the Hely-Hutchinson Memorial Lecture on the subject of multiculturalism. It’s a subject close to her heart.
A prize winning novelist, short story writer, and children’s writer, Desai’s family spoke several languages; her mother was German, and in her writing she has drawn parallels between lives lived in different cultures.
When she began writing, such high profile appearances would have been unthinkable.
“I would have been terrified,” she says. “I wasn’t a very social person. Having children, and being so deeply involved in the life of literature, what little social life I had was not congenial to me. I didn’t know any writers and nobody talked about books.
“If someone heard that you had a book out they would say, ‘oh, what a nice hobby.’ So I kept it very much to myself. My four children saw this and said they never wanted to write. They said, ‘you live such a boring life. We want to do far more exciting things.”
The youngest, Kiran, decided to study Environmental Studies at college.
“I got wonderful letters from Kiran at that time. I used to say that she should expand them and make something of them. She never responded to that. But some of the professors in the college recognised her writing talent and they were the ones to encourage her to give up the sciences and take up writing instead.”
Anita was thrilled. How, though, did she feel when Kiran won the Booker prize for The Inheritance of Loss? An award she, herself, had been shortlisted for three times?
“It was a wonderful moment; there was a sense of fulfilment,” she says. “I shared a writing life with Kiran and I had the feel of this book growing slowly; mostly under my roof.
“It had been a hard eight years for her. She had little support or encouragement, really, and none at all from anyone in the publishing world. So it was a triumph I could share with her. I am so happy for her.”
The first of Anita’s Booker nominations came in 1980 with Clear Light of Day. Set in Old Delhi in the time preceding partition, it is a sumptuous depiction of a family battling old jealousies. Reading it, one feels subsumed into their world. It’s a glorious read.
“That is probably the most autobiographical book that I have written,” she says. “It is not about my sisters and myself, but there is that sense of family and an old house. And Old Delhi at that time is one that I knew.”
Since then, Desai has veered away from the domestic tale.
“I have written bits and pieces about Italy and Germany. And my most recent book, The Zig Zag Way, published in 2004, was set entirely in a foreign country. And that was Mexico.
“I was very hesitant and tentative about the project because it was based, very much on travel and research rather than on my experience and knowledge of a place. It was set in Mexico’s past.
“It was enjoyable. It took me out of myself. Reading the history I found fascinating, because it has such parallels with Indian history.”
Anita can see parallels between India and Ireland too. “Religion has had a huge effect on the psyche of people in both countries,” she muses. “And the colonial past is another thing that we share.”
Anita’s lecture ‘Let us be Various,’ was a fascinating exploration into the way language affects writing, as well as contemporary life. She explained that, in choosing English to write in, she had to suppress her other languages. This, she explained, led to a certain linguistic unease.
Her solution was to incorporate other languages. In ‘In Custody,’ for example, we meet a poet of Urdu. And in Baumbartner’s Bombay she writes about a German Jewish refugee who ends up in India during the war and stays there.
Gentle, and softly spoken, Desai holds the audience with ease. But then, she is now used to talking in a lecture theatre, and holds several fellowships.
“At 45 I left India, and the domestic scene,” she says. “I taught, first in Cambridge England, then in Cambridge Massachusetts. That has trained me to come out of myself. ”
At present, Desai divides her time between India, America and Mexico. Since The Zig Zag Way was published, she has been writing shorter pieces such as introductions, and book reviews. Is her Canon complete?
“It’s complicated,” she says. “When I am not writing, I do miss it. I feel that the most important part of myself is not at peace. But I am not sure that I will write another book. One runs out of the energy required as one grows older. And it does require an enormous amount of energy to create a world that does not exist.
“And then India has always been my subject, and when I return now I find it so changed. It does not belong to me in the same way. It is no longer my subject. I do feel it requires younger writers and a newer generation to tackle that.”
I tell her that I’ve heard it said that a writing life lasts 40 years.
“I wouldn’t be that precise,” she says, “but I do feel that a writer starts writing with a certain amount of material within them. That has to be described, and after that it is becomes more difficult.
“I find it quite difficult to find new material that is quite as interesting; quite as exciting, as that that has come before.”
© Sue Leonard. 2008. ends.
Little Emperors.
Little Emperors.
By Sue Leonard.
Published in The Evening Herald. 5th July. 2008.
From the moment our children are born, we feel an overwhelming desire to protect them. We don’t want anything, or anyone to impinge on their perfect world.
We want, especially, to build their self esteem. So we praise them. And society concurs. Children are forever getting stars for being good; and medals not just for winning; but for taking part in sports.
And the result? We’re raising a generation of Little Emperors. Children who ‘rule’ the house. Their toys take over the living space; they choose what to watch on TV, and their first scribblings have pride of place on the walls.
They’re so used to having their time ‘scheduled’ by over caring parents, that they don’t know what it means to be bored. They’re not used to natural feelings of failure either. And that could lead to problems in the future.
Are schools to blame? Does the caring sharing environment where participation is rewarded rather than ability, foster an atmosphere of entitlement?
John Carr, General Secretary of the Union for Primary Schools, INTO, feels to blame schools is to fudge the issue.
“The Little Emperor phenomenon comes from the trend for smaller families and richer, more indulgent parents,” he feels. “And that is not the same as the trend for recognising effort in schools.
“In the past only a small elite got praised in school. Only those coming top. If you weren’t on the football team, or starring in the school play you got ignored. We must recognise effort as well as achievement.
“Introducing competition too early can be damaging,” he says. “There’s nothing worse than an 8 year old saying, ‘I am terrible at soccer.’ The focus, at that stage should be on participation not competition.”
Is consumerism to blame? Watching endless MTV and being constantly on line, our children believe that to consume is natural and normal. They think looking perfect will lead to success. And this rather worries Rowan Manahan, a career coach and author of ‘Where’s my Oasis.’
“A child’s sense of entitlement and their sense of privilege starts very young,” he says. “It’s a bad idea to tell someone they are great when, clearly, they are not. When praise is misplaced it turns quickly into delusion.
“Take pop idol,” he says. “You can see the absolute conviction on a competitors face that they have what it takes, and ‘what does Simon Cowell know?’ Even when, clearly, they haven’t an ounce of talent.”
It’s the same when they leave college. Graduates, Manahan says, have hopelessly unrealistic expectations of what any job will entail.
“They think the world is a meritocracy, and they believe that their talent will out,” he says. “They think teams are collaborative and co-operative. They are convinced that they will ‘have it all.’ Work comes as a huge culture shock.
“By the time they are 28 they may have made a series of moves. They’d say it was for more money, or for a funded MBA, but there is, I think, an unconscious thought there too.
“They think, ‘work can’t be like this everywhere. It can’t be this cold and unfeeling and this callous.’ And when they hit 30 they have an early midlife crisis. They think, ‘how can I do this for the rest of my life?’ They feel they’re not loved; they are not respected, and they are not even a number.”
· A recent production of Snow White at a Primary School in Japan featured 25 snow whites; no dwarfs and no wicked witches. Parents objected to one child being picked for the leading role.
· The head of HR in a leading Irish Company described Ireland’s young job seekers as ‘impossible.’ “They have totally unrealistic expectations and have a delusion in the value they will bring, and the pay packet they should receive,” he said.
· The Association of Graduate Recruiters in England would concur. They reported that one new recruit rang his mother to complain that he had to go to London the next day. ‘And they haven’t even given me a map,’ he whined.
© Sue Leonard. 2008.
By Sue Leonard.
Published in The Evening Herald. 5th July. 2008.
From the moment our children are born, we feel an overwhelming desire to protect them. We don’t want anything, or anyone to impinge on their perfect world.
We want, especially, to build their self esteem. So we praise them. And society concurs. Children are forever getting stars for being good; and medals not just for winning; but for taking part in sports.
And the result? We’re raising a generation of Little Emperors. Children who ‘rule’ the house. Their toys take over the living space; they choose what to watch on TV, and their first scribblings have pride of place on the walls.
They’re so used to having their time ‘scheduled’ by over caring parents, that they don’t know what it means to be bored. They’re not used to natural feelings of failure either. And that could lead to problems in the future.
Are schools to blame? Does the caring sharing environment where participation is rewarded rather than ability, foster an atmosphere of entitlement?
John Carr, General Secretary of the Union for Primary Schools, INTO, feels to blame schools is to fudge the issue.
“The Little Emperor phenomenon comes from the trend for smaller families and richer, more indulgent parents,” he feels. “And that is not the same as the trend for recognising effort in schools.
“In the past only a small elite got praised in school. Only those coming top. If you weren’t on the football team, or starring in the school play you got ignored. We must recognise effort as well as achievement.
“Introducing competition too early can be damaging,” he says. “There’s nothing worse than an 8 year old saying, ‘I am terrible at soccer.’ The focus, at that stage should be on participation not competition.”
Is consumerism to blame? Watching endless MTV and being constantly on line, our children believe that to consume is natural and normal. They think looking perfect will lead to success. And this rather worries Rowan Manahan, a career coach and author of ‘Where’s my Oasis.’
“A child’s sense of entitlement and their sense of privilege starts very young,” he says. “It’s a bad idea to tell someone they are great when, clearly, they are not. When praise is misplaced it turns quickly into delusion.
“Take pop idol,” he says. “You can see the absolute conviction on a competitors face that they have what it takes, and ‘what does Simon Cowell know?’ Even when, clearly, they haven’t an ounce of talent.”
It’s the same when they leave college. Graduates, Manahan says, have hopelessly unrealistic expectations of what any job will entail.
“They think the world is a meritocracy, and they believe that their talent will out,” he says. “They think teams are collaborative and co-operative. They are convinced that they will ‘have it all.’ Work comes as a huge culture shock.
“By the time they are 28 they may have made a series of moves. They’d say it was for more money, or for a funded MBA, but there is, I think, an unconscious thought there too.
“They think, ‘work can’t be like this everywhere. It can’t be this cold and unfeeling and this callous.’ And when they hit 30 they have an early midlife crisis. They think, ‘how can I do this for the rest of my life?’ They feel they’re not loved; they are not respected, and they are not even a number.”
· A recent production of Snow White at a Primary School in Japan featured 25 snow whites; no dwarfs and no wicked witches. Parents objected to one child being picked for the leading role.
· The head of HR in a leading Irish Company described Ireland’s young job seekers as ‘impossible.’ “They have totally unrealistic expectations and have a delusion in the value they will bring, and the pay packet they should receive,” he said.
· The Association of Graduate Recruiters in England would concur. They reported that one new recruit rang his mother to complain that he had to go to London the next day. ‘And they haven’t even given me a map,’ he whined.
© Sue Leonard. 2008.
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