Finally, huge thanks to my editor Rebecca Raskin and everyone at Harper Perennial; to the booksellers who welcome me in when I put my head round their doors; to my husband, Wilf Judd; to Markus Hoffmann at Regal Hoffmann & Associates in New York and, as ever, to my agent Gaia Banks, at Sheil Land Associates, UK.
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
About the Author
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Meet Felicity Hayes-McCoy
About the Book
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The Story Behind The Transatlantic Bookclub
Read On
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Have You Read? More by Felicity Hayes-McCoy
About the Author
Meet Felicity Hayes-McCoy
I’VE BEEN A professional writer all my working life and a reader for longer than I can remember. Along the way, my projects have included nonfiction titles; children’s books; original TV dramas and contributions to series (including Ballykissangel, the BBC’s smash hit series set in Ireland); radio soap opera, features, documentaries, and plays; screenplays; a couple of opera libretti; and interactive multimedia. But—given that my childhood was spent largely behind sofas, reading stories—I suspect it was inevitable that, sooner or later, I’d come to write a series of books about books, with a protagonist who’s a librarian.
I was born in Dublin, Ireland, studied English and Irish language and literature at university, and immigrated to London in my early twenties. I built a successful career there, as an actress and then as a writer: in fact, it was books that led me to the stage in the first place, the wonderful Blue Door Theatre series by the English children’s author Pamela Brown. Back in the 1960s Dublin was famous for its musty, quirky secondhand bookshops beside the River Liffey. My father, who was a historian, was unable to pass the stalls that stood outside them without stopping and never came home without a book or two for himself or one of the family. I still have the Nelson edition of The Swish of the Curtain that he bought me in 1963, with the price and the date penciled inside in his careful, elegant handwriting. It cost him ninepence, which I’m not sure he’d have spent so cheerfully if he’d known that his gift was going to make me an actress, not an academic. Still, I like to think he’d have been pleased to know that, thirty years later, as a writer in London, I successfully pitched and dramatized the Blue Door Theatre series for BBC Radio.
To a certain extent, my Finfarran Peninsula series has a little of my own story in it. Though Hanna Casey’s is a rural background, like me she grew up in Ireland and moved to London, where she married. In 1986, I met and married the English opera director Wilf Judd, then artistic director of the Garden Venture at London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Unlike Hanna and her rat-fink husband Malcolm, though, Wilf and I met as colleagues, and we continue to work together, sharing our love of literature, theatre, ecology, and design, and dividing our life and work between a flat in inner-city London and a stone house at the western end of Ireland’s Dingle Peninsula.
In my memoir The House on an Irish Hillside I write about our Irish home on this real peninsula, which, while geographically similar, is culturally quite different from my fictional Finfarran. One of the defining differences is that our West Kerry home is in what is called a Gaeltacht—an area where Irish, not English, is the language of everyday life. Gaeltacht, pronounced “Gwale-tockt,” comes from the word Gaeilge, which is often translated into English as “Gaelic.” And “Gaelic,” incidentally, is not a word ever used in Ireland for the Irish language!
I first visited the western end of the Dingle Peninsula at age seventeen, not just to further my Irish language studies but because of a growing fascination with folklore. I was seeking something I’d glimpsed in my childhood in Dublin, a city kid curled on my country granny’s bed listening to stories. I’d begun to understand it as a student, ploughing through books and exams. And, on that first visit, I began to recognize something that, all my life, I’d taken for granted. The effect of thinking in two languages.
Since then, partly through writing The Library at the Edge of the World, I’ve come to realize more deeply that my earliest experience of storytelling came from my grandmother’s Irish-language oral tradition; and that memories of that inheritance, married to my love of Ireland’s English-language literary tradition, have shaped me as a writer.
When Wilf and I first decided to divide our life between two countries, we weren’t escaping from an English city to a rural Irish idyll. Life can be stressful anywhere in the world, and human nature is universal. So, for us, living in two places isn’t about running from one and escaping to the other. It’s about heightening our awareness and appreciation of both.
There’s a story about the legendary Irish hero Fionn Mac Cumhaill and his warriors hunting the hills of Ireland. They chase the deer from dawn to dusk and then gather to eat, drink, and make music. As they sit by the fire, between tunes and talk, Fionn puts a question to his companions: “What is the best music in the world?” One man says it’s the cry of the cuckoo. Another says it’s the ring of a spear on a shield. Someone suggests the baying of a pack of deerhounds, or the laughter of a willing girl. “Nothing wrong with any of them,” says Fionn, “but there’s better music.” So they ask him what it is and he gives them his answer. “The best music in the world,” he says, “is the music of what happens.”
Each time life and work take me from Ireland to London and back again, there’s a brief window—maybe just on the journey from the airport—when everything I see and hear becomes heightened. For an author, that’s gold dust. Focus sharpens, bringing with it a new sense of what it is to be alive. As my brain shifts from one language to another, I discover new word patterns, and reappraise those that are familiar. The contrasting rhythms of the two places provide endless entrance points for creativity; and, for me, the universality of human experience, seen against different backgrounds, has always been the music of what happens.
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About the Book
The Story Behind The Transatlantic Book Club
WHEN YOU’RE AN author, willpower is often the only thing that gets you to your desk—well, willpower and deadlines. You have to manage your workload alone, with no chats at the water cooler, which may be why so many authors love social media. Between writing chapters of novels, I chat with people all over the world—environmentalists, film buffs, and medievalists, people who tweet about politics, cake, cartoons, farming and autism, architecture, handbags and dogs. And libraries. Especially libraries. Tweeting librarians are the best. Indeed, without them, I might never have written The Transatlantic Book Club.
A few years ago, in a gift shop in Dingle, Ireland, I saw a card with a picture of women in formidable hats and the caption “My book club can beat up your book club.” A lady beside me had spotted it too and she told me it had caught her eye because she loved books. In fact, she said, she was a member of Ireland’s only Skype book club, hosted by her local library and another in Peoria, Illinois, USA. It was one of those happenstance conversations that sticks in the mind, so when I came to write my fifth Finfarran novel, I decided that a book club based in two countries would make a good focus for my plot.
Then it struck me that I hadn’t a clue how a Skype book club worked. Was it a kind of conference call and, if so, why bother to get together physically if each member could log in from a computer at home? I couldn’t begin work until I’d grasped the logistics, but, to my shame, I’d forgotten both the lady’s name and the town she’d said she was from.
Briefly, I considered telling my editor I’d better rethink my storyline, then I reminded myself of how many librarians follow me on Twitter, how helpful they are and how quickly they tend to respond. After all, when I wrote, in The Library at the Edge of the World, about a rasher of bacon turning up as a bookmark in Lissbeg Library, I had dozens of messages about banknotes, slices of cheese, cigarettes, and pressed flowers left in library books. There was even a
librarian in Arkansas who’d found a circular saw blade; and another, in France, who’d had to deal discreetly with an indiscreet love letter.
So, instead of giving up on my plot, I took to Twitter and tweeted #Irish #Librarians Help! What local library hosts a transatlantic book club? Twenty minutes later Twitter delivered pure gold. I had responses from libraries all over Ireland, putting me on to Marie Boland, a librarian in Clonmel, which is a town in Tipperary. I called Marie and, once again, was blessed by happenstance. The next of the club’s quarterly meetings was scheduled for the following week and she invited me to come along and see how things were done.
The club’s choice for the session I attended was Sebastian Barry’s Days without End, in which an immigrant Irishman comes to grips with life in the United States in the 1850s. From my seat on the side lines, I could see how a Skype book session worked and, immediately, my mind began to consider possibilities. Clearly there was scope for one of my characters to be in charge of technical stuff on one side of the ocean. Who should that be? What kind of things might a camera catch in the background of a discussion? What about the potential for tension between the immigrants in Resolve and characters who’d stayed behind in Finfarran? Or might the situation offer a unique setting for romance?
And, all the time, I was entranced by the real book club’s discussion and the takes and ideas bouncing back and forth across the Atlantic. Here was a physical instance of books breaking boundaries: of ordinary people from different sides of the world exploring the similarities and contrasts in their shared understanding of a story. It was a heartening and exciting conversation to observe and be part of, and a wonderful example of how the internet can bring communities together.
I’d known from the outset that my fictional book club would read a classic detective story, and I’d planned how various story strands could come together via that device. And, since this wasn’t the first Finfarran novel, I was able to assure my kind hosts that I really was just researching, and that none of them would appear as a character in my book! Later, when I was back at my desk, I was able to use the logistics of what I’d seen to devise The Transatlantic Book Club’s plot, and to recall what I’d seen in order to describe it.
That evening, before leaving Clonmel library, I decided on The Transatlantic Book Club’s title, and that I’d dedicate it to the real Skype book club’s members. On the road home, I was fired up by the energy, humour, and thoughtfulness I’d experienced, a thrill that stayed with me throughout the months I spent writing the novel. But the best bit of all was when I heard that the real Skype book club’s members in Tipperary and Illinois planned to discuss my book at one of their 2020 sessions—and that I was invited to come along again and join the group. Few things delight authors more than invitations to give library talks, or to take part in book club sessions. That’s partly because, as I said at the outset, we live strangely isolated lives, sitting in front of screens and often dressed in our pyjamas. It’s also because there’s something special about meeting readers, whether it’s online or face to face. The Transatlantic Book Club gave me the best of what both the virtual and the physical worlds have to offer an author. I hope reading it will give you as much pleasure as I’ve had from writing it.
Read On
Have You Read? More by Felicity Hayes-McCoy
THE HOUSE ON AN IRISH HILLSIDE
by Felicity Hayes-McCoy
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“From the moment I crossed the mountain I fell in love. With the place, which was more beautiful than any place I’d ever seen. With the people I met there. And with a way of looking at life that was deeper, richer and wiser than any I’d known before. When I left I dreamt of clouds on the mountain. I kept going back.”
We all lead very busy lives and sometimes it’s hard to find the time to be the people we want to be. Twelve years ago Felicity Hayes-McCoy left the hectic pace of the city and returned to Ireland to make a new life in a remarkable house on the stunning Dingle Peninsula. Having chosen to live in a community that, previously, she’d only known as a visitor, she finds herself reengaging with values and experiences and reevaluating a sense of identity that she’d thought she’d left behind.
Beautifully written, this is a life-affirming tale of “a house of music and memory,” and of being reminded of the things that really matter.
“Hayes-McCoy is a lovely writer, far superior to the average memoirist. . . . She has a style that’s poetic but not showy; finely honed but easy and unforced; descriptive and evocative without seeming to try too hard.”
—The Irish Independent
“Wise, funny, and blazingly beautiful.”
—Joanna Lumley, actor, author, and television presenter
ENOUGH IS PLENTY
by Felicity Hayes-McCoy
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An emigrant to England in the 1970s, Felicity Hayes-McCoy knew she’d return to Corca Dhuibhne, Ireland’s Dingle Peninsula, a place she’d fallen in love with at seventeen. Now she and her English husband have restored a stone house there, the focus for this chronicle in response to reader requests for an illustrated sequel to her memoir The House on an Irish Hillside.
The Celts celebrated the cycle of the seasons as a vibrant expression of eternity, endlessly turning from darkness to light and back again. Enough Is Plenty, a book about the ordinary small pleasures in life that can easily go unnoticed, celebrates these seasonal rhythms and offers the reader recipes from the author’s kitchen and information on organic food production and gardening. It views the year from a place where a vibrant twenty-first-century lifestyle is still marked by Ireland’s Celtic past and the ancient rhythms of Samhain (winter), Imbolc (spring), Bealtaine (summer), and Lughnasa (autumn). In this way of life, health and happiness are rooted in awareness of nature and the environment, and nourishment comes from music, friendship, and storytelling as well as from good food.
“Magical.”
—Alice Taylor, bestselling author of To School Through the Fields
“A gorgeous book.”
—Sunday Independent
A WOVEN SILENCE: MEMORY, HISTORY & REMEMBRANCE
by Felicity Hayes-McCoy
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How do we know that what we remember is the truth? Inspired by the story of her relative Marion Stokes, one of three women who raised the tricolor over Enniscorthy in Easter Week 1916, Felicity Hayes-McCoy explores the consequences for all of us when memories are manipulated or obliterated, intentionally or by chance. In the power struggle after Ireland’s Easter Rising, involving, among others, Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera, the ideals for which Marion and her companions fought were eroded. As Felicity maps her own family stories onto the history of the state, her story moves from Washerwoman’s Hill in Dublin, to London, and back again; spans two world wars, a revolution, a civil war, and the development of a republic; and culminates in Ireland’s 2015 same-sex marriage referendum.
“A powerful piece of personal and political history.”
—The Sunday Times (Ireland)
“Questions are explored delicately and deftly.”
—Irish Examiner
“Writing of high order.”
—Frank McGuinness, author, poet, and playwright
DINGLE AND ITS HINTERLAND: PEOPLE, PLACES AND HERITAGE
by Felicity Hayes-McCoy
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The tip of the Dingle Peninsula, at the westernmost edge of Europe, is one of Ireland’s most isolated regions. But for millennia, it has also been a hub for foreign visitors: its position made it a medieval center for traders, and the wildness of its remote landscape has been the setting for spiritual pilgrimage. This seeming paradox is what makes Dingle and its western hinterland unique: the ancient, native culture has been preserved, while also being influenced by the world at large. The rich heritage of the area is best understood by chatting with the people who live and work here. But how many visitors get that opportunity?
Working with her husband, Wilf Judd, Felicit
y Hayes-McCoy takes us on an insiders’ tour, illustrated by their own photographs, and interviews locals along the way, ranging from farmers, postmasters, and boatmen to museum curators, radio presenters, and sean-nós singers. A resident for the last twenty years, she offers practical information and advice as well as cultural insights that will give any visitor a deeper understanding of this special place.
“For those of us who have long been under the spell of the Dingle Peninsula, and for those who have yet to discover it, this book is a brilliant guide to the land, the culture, the history, and especially its people.”
—Boris Weintraub, former senior writer, National Geographic
THE LIBRARY AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
by Felicity Hayes-McCoy
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As she drives her mobile library van between little villages on Ireland’s West Coast, Hanna Casey tries not to think about a lot of things. Like the sophisticated lifestyle she abandoned after finding her English barrister husband in bed with another woman. Or that she’s back in Lissbeg, the rural Irish town she walked away from in her teens, living in the back bedroom of her overbearing mother’s retirement bungalow. Or, worse yet, her nagging fear that, as the local librarian and a prominent figure in the community, her failed marriage and ignominious return have made her a focus of gossip.
With her teenage daughter, Jazz, off traveling the world and her relationship with her own mother growing increasingly tense, Hanna is determined to reclaim her independence by restoring a derelict cottage left to her by her great-aunt. But when the threatened closure of the Lissbeg Library puts her personal plans in jeopardy, Hanna finds herself leading a battle to restore the heart and soul of the Finfarran Peninsula’s fragmented community. And she’s about to discover that the neighbors she’d always kept at a distance have come to mean more to her than she ever could have imagined.
The Transatlantic Book Club Page 28