Jilly Cooper
Interviewed by Sue Leonard
Jilly Cooper welcomes me with her trademark, gap-toothed grin. A youthful 73, she’s still a natural flirt. When the waiter delivers our tea to her suite in the Shelburne Hotel, she reads his name tag, Julius, and says,
“Ah! Like Julius Caesar! I hope you don’t behave like him.” She smiles, admiringly, as he leaves the room, saying, “look at that swagger!”
Jilly’s niceness, and genuine interest in people makes her a sometimes frustrating interviewee. When you ask her what she thinks, she turns the question back and asks for your view. She can be utterly persuasive. We talk about the hunting ban in England; the Pope’s visit - Jilly found him utterly charming; and the glut of lesbianism in London.
“I’ve heard London is wall to wall lesbian. All the women are having affairs, but having them with women and the men don’t mind. I’ve been thinking about that quite a lot.” There are none in her new book, but there’s a gay vicar and a graphic gay sex scene.
Softly pretty, charming and effusive, Jilly reminds me of Etta, the vague, put upon sixty-something heroine of ‘Jump,’ who finds a tortured racehorse in the snow in a wood.
“My son, Felix, calls me Etta all the time. He’s so naughty,” says Jilly, denying that there’s too much of a resemblance. “She’s much nicer than me. I don’t make scones for workmen.”
Jilly invented Etta, a woman bullied by her high flying children, to highlight granny abuse.
“I see it all the time. These women have interesting careers. They have three children and the wretched mother is summoned from anywhere to look after them and they’re not paid. And they get so tired. It’s awful.”
Etta leads a huge cast of trainers, owners, jockeys, stable lads and lasses, actors, businessmen, and plenty of nubile teenagers, in this 700 plus page blockbuster. It’s set in fictitious Larkshire, around the world of National Hunt racing. Winning ownership in a court case of the one eyed horse, Mrs Wilkinson, the animal besotted Etta forms a village syndicate, and the horse starts winning races.
There’s plenty of sexual intrigue and moments of high comedy, and there are appearances from established characters, like the now famous Rupert Campbell Black.
“He’ll have a bigger role in my next book, about flat racing. He’s going to be sixty and he’s appalled.”
Jilly joined two syndicates during her exhaustive research.
“That was blissful, and terribly funny. You all get together and you have jolly lunches. We had this lovely horse who won races, but he broke down in Worcester and that was awful. We were all cheering, and it just collapsed. We charged across, like Princess Diana in the mother’s race, and cried all over it.” It’s a scene replicated in the book.
Her research brought her to Ireland too; to Leopardstown and to the Shelburne, where there’s a raunchy sex scene in the Parnell Suite. She gave her adopted daughter, Emily, a weekend here when she was twenty, along with her boyfriend of the time. Emily, she explains, is Irish.
“I wanted her to get a sense of that. She’s so beautiful. I love her to bits.”
Jilly has four grandchildren, but the photo she puts proudly on the table, is of her beloved greyhound, Feather, who was rescued from the Dublin streets.
“Look at my Irish boy. Isn’t he awesome? You have to admit he is lovely.” He’s sporting a huge red rosette. But he hadn’t won it.
“I was the judge at a dog show for a lovely trainer called Richard Phillips where there were 500 dogs entered. Feather was with me on a lead. I couldn’t give a prize to everybody, so I had to tell all the dogs, ‘I’d love to give you first prize,’ and Feather got lower and lower. He hated me chatting up the other dogs, so they gave him a rosette to cheer him up.”
Jump has shot straight to number one in the English best seller lists, and that’s a huge relief for Jilly, who found writing the book a struggle. Her husband, Leo, has Parkinson’s disease. He has carers, but Jilly looks after him at night.
“Leo is so sweet, but I don’t get much sleep. I was lacking energy and I thought the book was awfully bad. I’d been paid a large sum of money to write it, and I’d passed my deadline. I was worried. I get into a muddle too. I think it’s age.”
Jilly writes in a gazebo in her garden in Gloucestershire for seven or eight hours a day. She says it’s like being surrounded by her family. When I ask if she enjoys parts of the writing, she turns the question back to me.
“Do you enjoy writing?” I say I’m not a ‘real’ writer, and this sparks a discussion on journalism. Jilly first became famous for penning hilarious columns for The Sunday Times. Deeply personal, they told of her life as a young working wife. She later wrote for The Mail on Sunday.
“This book is because of journalism,” she says. “One of the things I do absolutely brilliantly is to keep my sentences short and my chapters short. I leave air on the page. That is advice I would give to any writer. Journalists are taught to be readable, aren’t they?”
When I commend Jilly on her dignity through tough times; and her openness in talking about her lack of fertility, and later, the public unveiling of Leo’s long affair, she dismisses these difficulties.
“I didn’t give birth to kids, but to get a career and adopt two babies at the same time was a miracle. If you don’t give birth, you must write because it’s so satisfying when books arrive at the printers. Counting this book I’ve had 40 babies.”
She’s won awards too. Honoured with an OBE for services to literature, last year she added an Honorary Doctorate of Letters, awarded by the University of Gloucestershire.
“It’s hysterical,” she says. “And now I’ve got an award for services to racing. That is faint making. They say the book will help young people to come to racing.”
What, though, would she most like to be remembered for?
“For cheering people up.” In which case, she has more than succeeded. I know of several eighteen year olds who read Jilly’s books to relieve the stress of exams. And reading Jump, with its horses who wander round drink’s parties, it’s dogs who inhabit beds, and goat, Chisholm, who ends up with a hangover, it’s possible to forget all the gloom and doom for an hour or two.
This latest in the line of Rutshire Chronicles shows a sense of community, with niceness and decency at its core. We’re talking on ‘black Thursday,’ and it’s been the best possible antidote.
Jilly dedicates my book to Rufus, my black Labrador, saying that Labradors are next to God. She hugs me as I leave. I tell her she’s my role model.
“Your roll in the hay model,” she says, and her laughter follows me into the corridor.
Jump by Jilly Cooper is published by Bantum Press.
© Sue Leonard 2010
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Review. Robin Black.
if I loved you,i would tell you this
Review: Sue Leonard
Saturday, October 02, 2010
Robin Black
Picador; €17.15
Each story from American writer Robin Black in this collection is a mini work of art. She is telling one story about a married daughter sneaking a lover into her parent’s house, but the real narrative simmers underneath.
Many of the characters deal with difference. A woman hides her stroke from her husband; a man, mildly damaged at birth, ‘loses’ certain words. This is deftly dealt with, the disability informing the plot, rather than defining it.
A father and his blind teenage daughter travel to collect a guide dog, but the real story is the effect on the family of the accident years before, coupled with the daughter’s extraordinary insight. A heartless man causes a border dispute, erecting a fence just feet from his neighbour’s front door, but the point is how his casual thoughtlessness affects the couple struggling with illness and stress.
A father is reunited with the daughter he has not seen for many years. We expect a story of forgiveness, but it’s more about the father’s sense of alienation. Immortalising John Parker shows an artist in grief for a dead lover — but transforms into an exploration into detachment and loss of self. Suffering early dementia, John Parker is in the process of becoming lost.
Divorced Beheaded Survived starts innocently enough with a childhood game. Then it flashes forward years to when the protagonists’ son loses a friend in a car crash. This tragedy brings back the death of her brother in childhood. What she remembers most from that time is how the tragedy set her apart.
The author shows amazing perception of human frailty. In two stories, Pine, and The History of the World, she shows how the unhappy, the bereaved and divorced, can drive others away with self-obsession. The stories stay with you. They teach life lessons and change the way you view the world.
Review: Sue Leonard
Saturday, October 02, 2010
Robin Black
Picador; €17.15
Each story from American writer Robin Black in this collection is a mini work of art. She is telling one story about a married daughter sneaking a lover into her parent’s house, but the real narrative simmers underneath.
Many of the characters deal with difference. A woman hides her stroke from her husband; a man, mildly damaged at birth, ‘loses’ certain words. This is deftly dealt with, the disability informing the plot, rather than defining it.
A father and his blind teenage daughter travel to collect a guide dog, but the real story is the effect on the family of the accident years before, coupled with the daughter’s extraordinary insight. A heartless man causes a border dispute, erecting a fence just feet from his neighbour’s front door, but the point is how his casual thoughtlessness affects the couple struggling with illness and stress.
A father is reunited with the daughter he has not seen for many years. We expect a story of forgiveness, but it’s more about the father’s sense of alienation. Immortalising John Parker shows an artist in grief for a dead lover — but transforms into an exploration into detachment and loss of self. Suffering early dementia, John Parker is in the process of becoming lost.
Divorced Beheaded Survived starts innocently enough with a childhood game. Then it flashes forward years to when the protagonists’ son loses a friend in a car crash. This tragedy brings back the death of her brother in childhood. What she remembers most from that time is how the tragedy set her apart.
The author shows amazing perception of human frailty. In two stories, Pine, and The History of the World, she shows how the unhappy, the bereaved and divorced, can drive others away with self-obsession. The stories stay with you. They teach life lessons and change the way you view the world.
Review. At Home with the Templetons by Monica McInerney
At Home with the Templetons
Review: Sue Leonard
Saturday, October 09, 2010
Monica McInerney
Macmillan, €18.45
IMAGINE living in a stately home. It sounds exciting, but when the Templeton family are transported from England to the house they’d inherited in Australia, there’s little fun involved.
The father, Henry, persuades his children to dress in traditional clothes to give paying visitors the grand tour, and they have to muck in with the cleaning and tidying too.
They’re considered strange by all the locals; nobody is keen to mix with them. And to make matters worse, their aunt Hope, an alcoholic, has a habit of spoiling any moments of family happiness. The older girls, Charlotte and Audrey, get some solace from attending boarding school, but Gracie and the tearaway Spenser lead an isolated existence. Until, that is, their neighbour, a young widow called Nina, and her son Tom start to form links with the family.
Nina, though, is wary of the Templetons. She fears Tom’s friendship with them will increase her own isolation. But when the family suddenly decamp back to England, it’s Nina who becomes caretaker.
This door-stopper of a family saga skirts over the next few years, using letters between the families to keep us up to speed until Tom and Gracie are reunited. It covers their burgeoning relationship and a tragedy that forces the two families apart again. Can there possibly be a resolution?
A huge seller in Australia, McInerney is gaining a reputation here too. There’s an old fashioned feel to her storytelling, reminiscent of Rosamund Pilcher, but it’s a less cosy read. There’s plenty of humour, but it’s difficult for the reader to warm to the Templeton clan, apart from the gentle Gracie.
This book will appeal to readers who prefer a saga to more contemporary women’s fiction. McInerney has a good way with words and a humorous touch. But it would have been a much better book at two-thirds of its length.
Review: Sue Leonard
Saturday, October 09, 2010
Monica McInerney
Macmillan, €18.45
IMAGINE living in a stately home. It sounds exciting, but when the Templeton family are transported from England to the house they’d inherited in Australia, there’s little fun involved.
The father, Henry, persuades his children to dress in traditional clothes to give paying visitors the grand tour, and they have to muck in with the cleaning and tidying too.
They’re considered strange by all the locals; nobody is keen to mix with them. And to make matters worse, their aunt Hope, an alcoholic, has a habit of spoiling any moments of family happiness. The older girls, Charlotte and Audrey, get some solace from attending boarding school, but Gracie and the tearaway Spenser lead an isolated existence. Until, that is, their neighbour, a young widow called Nina, and her son Tom start to form links with the family.
Nina, though, is wary of the Templetons. She fears Tom’s friendship with them will increase her own isolation. But when the family suddenly decamp back to England, it’s Nina who becomes caretaker.
This door-stopper of a family saga skirts over the next few years, using letters between the families to keep us up to speed until Tom and Gracie are reunited. It covers their burgeoning relationship and a tragedy that forces the two families apart again. Can there possibly be a resolution?
A huge seller in Australia, McInerney is gaining a reputation here too. There’s an old fashioned feel to her storytelling, reminiscent of Rosamund Pilcher, but it’s a less cosy read. There’s plenty of humour, but it’s difficult for the reader to warm to the Templeton clan, apart from the gentle Gracie.
This book will appeal to readers who prefer a saga to more contemporary women’s fiction. McInerney has a good way with words and a humorous touch. But it would have been a much better book at two-thirds of its length.
Denise Sewell
Dark side of the boy
By Sue Leonard
Saturday, October 09, 2010
Danny, Mario and Me
Denise Sewell
New Island; €13.99
Sue Leonard. talks to writer Denise Sewell about inhabiting the minds of teenage boys and tackling the traumatic subject of suicide in her latest book
IF THERE’S one thing that makes Denise Sewell angry, it’s injustice. The writer from Co Cavan, now living in Monaghan, gets incensed when she sees someone in need denied the help they have looked for. When a tragedy happens, because someone has been denied weekend services, it puts her into a terrible humour.
"It’s like that man who killed his family on a weekend, when he’d been desperate for help. It puts my blood pressure up when I hear something like that, and it is so common. When someone is suicidal and needs to be monitored, they seem often left to their own devices."
Teen suicide in particular disturbs Sewell. "Most parents have no idea what they are dealing with if their child becomes depressed. No one can say, ‘no one belonging to me could ever kill themselves’. And for me, it seems the most awful thing that could happen to someone I love."
Sewell doesn’t baulk at penning the painful. Her novels have been fresh and stylish, but have always confronted serious issues. She dealt with teenage pregnancy in her first, Some Girls Will; and with the theft of a child in The Fall Girl. But she was worried that tackling teen suicide might prove off-putting for readers.
"I’d been told by a friend that the subject was much too gloomy," she says when we meet in Dublin. "So I started another book; in fact I tried two different ideas, but my heart wasn’t in them.
"When I’d finished my last book my agent suggested I try and write from the male point of view. That seemed right. I wanted something difficult; and I took myself through the experience of what it might be like for the friends left behind. Suicide must have such an impact on them. Then, because I realised what a challenge I was taking on, I decided to set the book in the 1980s in a border town – at least that was familiar territory."
The novel starts with the suicide of Danny. He’s hung himself in a field and his two, devastated friends have no idea why. He’d seemed happy. Mario cries, grieves, and eventually struggles on with the semblance of his life, but the deeper thinking Tadhg can barely function. Desperate for answers, he latches onto Danny’s ma, Margaret, visiting her every day in a quest for mutual comfort.
Tadhg’s mother despairs of him. She never trusted Danny, a rebel from the North, who has family in the IRA. Tadhg rejects her concern. He leaves school and tells his ma, quite bluntly, that he cared more for Danny than he did for her.
"I completely understand how Tadhg felt," says Denise.
"I did inhabit his mind in a way. When Margaret turned round and told Tadhg she was leaving, I cried into the computer. She was his connection to Danny still. He wasn’t sure if he was falling in love with her – but it was an intense relationship."
The author has infiltrated the minds of the boys with great conviction. They have distinctive, separate voices. We only see the defiant side of Danny at the start; but as we learn of him through the memories of others, it’s clear he was a loyal friend, who was clever and considerate too.
"I don’t think Danny cared what anyone thought of him," says Denise. "He had the courage to do anything, but you couldn’t cross him. As I was writing the book his character became stronger and stronger in my head. He became almost stronger than me – at some stages I wanted the novel to move in a certain direction, then I’d think, ‘No. He wouldn’t have done that’."
Denise has no brothers. Was it hard keeping the voice of teenagers authentic?
"I certainly had to consciously think more like a boy," she says. "When Tadhg’s sister did all that yoyo dieting, a girl might have had some understanding, but he couldn’t understand. He said, ‘just stop eating’. I had to think how he might feel. I think teen boys feel more in black and white."
Before she became a writer, Denise, a mother of two, worked in the post office. Her husband, Eamon, still does. In fact he double jobs to pay the bills to support children Kevin and Olivia, and to enable Denise to keep writing.
She’s been acclaimed for her original, thought-provoking novels, but because her books don’t fit into a predictable genre, she feels largely overlooked.
"I don’t begrudge chick-lit writers their success, but it frustrates me when people complain that Irish women are all writing about the same thing. My books are different, and not difficult. But they’re not promoted enough in shops.
"I would love my books to do well. I’m not greedy, but Kevin is hopefully going to college in three years time. It can be difficult to keep the faith. The only consolation is that I know I’m not the only person in this position. And with the recession it would be difficult to get a regular job anyway."
Currently working on a play, Denise writes for four hours daily when the children are at school. "It keeps me grounded. I can’t get too caught up over stupid things; like if Kevin makes the football team or how well Olivia does at a feis. But the writing itself can go through highs and lows. Especially when the subject matter is looking at death."
So will she write a happy book next? She laughs. "The subject matter has to mean something to me. I felt compelled to write this one." Does she hope it will raise awareness? "I hope I’ve been sensitive about suicide; I hope people who have been affected by it will think I’ve done a good job. I’d like them to believe in the characters and in the story. I’d like them to feel it was honestly written."
- Keys to the Cage – How People Cope with Depression by Sue Leonard is in bookshops now.
By Sue Leonard
Saturday, October 09, 2010
Danny, Mario and Me
Denise Sewell
New Island; €13.99
Sue Leonard. talks to writer Denise Sewell about inhabiting the minds of teenage boys and tackling the traumatic subject of suicide in her latest book
IF THERE’S one thing that makes Denise Sewell angry, it’s injustice. The writer from Co Cavan, now living in Monaghan, gets incensed when she sees someone in need denied the help they have looked for. When a tragedy happens, because someone has been denied weekend services, it puts her into a terrible humour.
"It’s like that man who killed his family on a weekend, when he’d been desperate for help. It puts my blood pressure up when I hear something like that, and it is so common. When someone is suicidal and needs to be monitored, they seem often left to their own devices."
Teen suicide in particular disturbs Sewell. "Most parents have no idea what they are dealing with if their child becomes depressed. No one can say, ‘no one belonging to me could ever kill themselves’. And for me, it seems the most awful thing that could happen to someone I love."
Sewell doesn’t baulk at penning the painful. Her novels have been fresh and stylish, but have always confronted serious issues. She dealt with teenage pregnancy in her first, Some Girls Will; and with the theft of a child in The Fall Girl. But she was worried that tackling teen suicide might prove off-putting for readers.
"I’d been told by a friend that the subject was much too gloomy," she says when we meet in Dublin. "So I started another book; in fact I tried two different ideas, but my heart wasn’t in them.
"When I’d finished my last book my agent suggested I try and write from the male point of view. That seemed right. I wanted something difficult; and I took myself through the experience of what it might be like for the friends left behind. Suicide must have such an impact on them. Then, because I realised what a challenge I was taking on, I decided to set the book in the 1980s in a border town – at least that was familiar territory."
The novel starts with the suicide of Danny. He’s hung himself in a field and his two, devastated friends have no idea why. He’d seemed happy. Mario cries, grieves, and eventually struggles on with the semblance of his life, but the deeper thinking Tadhg can barely function. Desperate for answers, he latches onto Danny’s ma, Margaret, visiting her every day in a quest for mutual comfort.
Tadhg’s mother despairs of him. She never trusted Danny, a rebel from the North, who has family in the IRA. Tadhg rejects her concern. He leaves school and tells his ma, quite bluntly, that he cared more for Danny than he did for her.
"I completely understand how Tadhg felt," says Denise.
"I did inhabit his mind in a way. When Margaret turned round and told Tadhg she was leaving, I cried into the computer. She was his connection to Danny still. He wasn’t sure if he was falling in love with her – but it was an intense relationship."
The author has infiltrated the minds of the boys with great conviction. They have distinctive, separate voices. We only see the defiant side of Danny at the start; but as we learn of him through the memories of others, it’s clear he was a loyal friend, who was clever and considerate too.
"I don’t think Danny cared what anyone thought of him," says Denise. "He had the courage to do anything, but you couldn’t cross him. As I was writing the book his character became stronger and stronger in my head. He became almost stronger than me – at some stages I wanted the novel to move in a certain direction, then I’d think, ‘No. He wouldn’t have done that’."
Denise has no brothers. Was it hard keeping the voice of teenagers authentic?
"I certainly had to consciously think more like a boy," she says. "When Tadhg’s sister did all that yoyo dieting, a girl might have had some understanding, but he couldn’t understand. He said, ‘just stop eating’. I had to think how he might feel. I think teen boys feel more in black and white."
Before she became a writer, Denise, a mother of two, worked in the post office. Her husband, Eamon, still does. In fact he double jobs to pay the bills to support children Kevin and Olivia, and to enable Denise to keep writing.
She’s been acclaimed for her original, thought-provoking novels, but because her books don’t fit into a predictable genre, she feels largely overlooked.
"I don’t begrudge chick-lit writers their success, but it frustrates me when people complain that Irish women are all writing about the same thing. My books are different, and not difficult. But they’re not promoted enough in shops.
"I would love my books to do well. I’m not greedy, but Kevin is hopefully going to college in three years time. It can be difficult to keep the faith. The only consolation is that I know I’m not the only person in this position. And with the recession it would be difficult to get a regular job anyway."
Currently working on a play, Denise writes for four hours daily when the children are at school. "It keeps me grounded. I can’t get too caught up over stupid things; like if Kevin makes the football team or how well Olivia does at a feis. But the writing itself can go through highs and lows. Especially when the subject matter is looking at death."
So will she write a happy book next? She laughs. "The subject matter has to mean something to me. I felt compelled to write this one." Does she hope it will raise awareness? "I hope I’ve been sensitive about suicide; I hope people who have been affected by it will think I’ve done a good job. I’d like them to believe in the characters and in the story. I’d like them to feel it was honestly written."
- Keys to the Cage – How People Cope with Depression by Sue Leonard is in bookshops now.
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