A RISKY BUSINESS Irish Historical Fiction: Repossession, Restoration & Revival
says, ‘by listening to them talk in various documentaries. I read everything I could get my hands on: biographies, art books, nature books etc. And I used Jo Hopper’s diaries for specific incidents that occurred in their everyday lives.’ There’s a wonderful fly- on-the-wall quality to the descriptions of the Hopper’s volatile marriage, and a painterly quality to the writing. Some passages felt like stepping into a Hopper painting, and having it come to life around you. Christine rented a house up the beach from the Hoppers’ summer house. She wanted to experience the light, the tide, the stars, just as they had done. ‘I walked around their house,’ she said, ‘sat on the bench built by Hopper himself and imagined my way into their world. I even managed to find a packet of photographs showing the interior of the house shortly after the Hoppers died. I also visited Hopper’s boyhood home in Nyack outside New York which helped me to understand his childhood. These visits proved to be, not only the most enjoyable part of the research, but also the most useful.’ Another fabulous bio-fictional novel is Joseph O'Connor’s remarkable Shadowplay (Vintage, 2019) which won Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. Set in London of 1878, amidst the Oscar Wilde trial and Jack the Ripper’s reign of terror, the novel explores the relationship between theatrical stars Henry Irving, Ellen Terry and theatre manager, Bram Stoker. The novel is set before Stoker created one of the most potent characters of all time. Clues linked to the creation of Dracula are scattered throughout Shadowplay – we see how aspects of various characters, and elements from London of the time, may have made their way into the classic. Like Dracula, Shadowplay is an epistolary novel composed of letters, articles, and diary entries, which gives the reader that added, ‘oh should I be reading this?’ voyeuristic thrill.
It’s a good time for Irish historical fiction. Christine Dwyer Hickey won the eleventh Walter Scott Prize for her novel The Narrow Land (Atlantic Books, 2019), which explores the marriage of artists Edward and Jo Hopper. The judges praised the author’s courage in tackling a subject already explored by many biographers. Dwyer Hickey, they said, ‘embraced the risk and created a masterpiece.’ The Edward and Jo of The Narrow Land are a fascinating couple; bickering husband and wife, artist and muse, and also – successful artist and stymied artist. In this retelling of the artists’ lives, the incongruence between Jo’s artistic ambition and her lived reality as wife and muse is forensically explored. Initially, Dwyer Hickey hadn’t planned to focus on the couple at all. ‘The Hoppers were supposed to have cameo roles!’ she says. I asked Christine about the exact moment Jo and Edward caught her imagination. It turns out that she was visiting Truro on Cape Cod, when the couple ‘came to her’. ‘I imagined them as a distant silhouette on a dune, viewed by another character, a ten-yearold boy, who would wonder who they were, standing there at the easels, painting under the blinding light. I had no idea they intended muscling in and taking over the entire novel! Writing about real people is a delicate matter, balancing fact and fiction, finding the voice… ‘I found their voices literally,’ Christine
8
FEATURES | Issue 94, November 2020
Nuala O'Connor’s latest release Becoming Belle (Piatkus, 2018) reimagines Isabel Bilton’s journey from music hall actress in London to becoming the Countess of Clancarty in rural Ireland. O’Connor is known for tackling iconic characters such as Sylvia Plath, and like Christine Dwyer Hickey with The Narrow Land, O’Connor’s subjects have often been well picked over by biographers and historians. It’s a brave route, one that takes immense skill to pull off. O’Connor responds to the challenge with gusto, loving what she calls ‘that audacious, excitable moment’ when she decides to write a novel about some like Emily Dickinson or Nora Barnacle: "It often feels like a crazy/brave idea to write about notorious people, though one that’s so juicy there’s no question of not pursuing it. I conjure for myself scholars of Dickinson or Joyce howling in despair at the treatment their beloved object might suffer at my hands. But as soon as I start into the research and the writing, that fear fades away and a more measured excitement and satisfaction replaces it. I approach my subjects with love and respect and, because of that, I want to do them proud and I hope I manage that. I’m not in the business of hagiography, but neither do I want to dismantle peoples’ good names: I aim to present fluid, flawed humans who had extraordinary times." When asked about her characters, and what draws her to them, O’Connor’s exhilaration and love for her work is palpable. ‘Something in the lives of these real women I write about, whether it’s Elizabeth Bishop or Belle Bilton, sparks a moment of high fascination in me. Once I move past that initial excitement, the research always, always opens out and I find these women had deep, humane, richly
