Carol Birch's latest book, The Naming of Eliza Quinn, is a tale of family feuds and long-buried secrets dating back to the time of the Irish Famine. Birch talked to our Techie about the research she did in order to depict this terrible time in Irish history.
Where did you get the idea of writing about the Irish Famine?
It came from the time when I lived in West Cork, I lived there for 8 years during the late 70s. I used to spend a lot of time going walking with the dogs, up in the mountains and it struck me how incredibly visible the history is on the landscape. It is quite stunning really, I'd be walking along and suddenly I'd come across the ruins of an old village or old settlement - little stumps of what used to be houses, now completely overgrown - and you'd see the ripples on the landscape that had been the potato ridges. It was so apparent that this had once been a community and it made a deep impression on me at the time. Then, many years later, it kind of came bubbling up.
Back then I never thought "oh I'll write about this", but I did take it all in. I was also told a story by someone in a pub about bones been found in a tree. I can't tell you what the full story was, as they had heard it from somebody else, but it stuck in my mind. I knew it was quite a heavy subject to get into but sometimes I don't plan what I'm going to write about. I start reading about a subject and it becomes what I'm going to write about. I started reading about the Famine and, although it is a terribly moving and upsetting thing to read about, once I'd started, I became fascinated. I read as much as I could and became immersed in it. I decided to take the angle of being just an ordinary person living through it and how it must have been for them.
My grandmother was educated in England and she has a completely different idea of what happened during the Famine years, as she was taught English history. It's refreshing to read such a well-researched book written by an English author.
I have got Irish ancestry but I was born and brought up in England. I am surprised that your grandmother was taught anything in school about the Irish Famine because I wasn't. The only thing I can remember is Cecil Woodham-Smith's book, The Great Hunger, which we read at school in, I think, sixth form. That was the first time I really heard about the Famine.
Was Eliza, your main protagonist, based on anyone?
I don't know where she came from, I really don't. When I got to that point in the book she just kind of jumped out. When I came to her section, I knew I was going to write about the Famine but I didn't know how I was going to do it, and all I could think was "my God, you've bitten off an awful lot here. Are you sure you can cope with it?" Somehow, though, when I found Eliza, her voice took over and did it for me. She wasn't consciously based on anyone.
I liked the way you used three different voices to tell the story. Was that planned?
I realised that Beatrice couldn't have known the story, or ever have found out what happened, so I needed some other way to tell the reader what happened. The only way to do that was to go back in time - it had to be someone who was living through it, telling the story. I think a lot of it is the bond between the mother and child. A lot of why Eliza was the way she was, was because she was determined to see her child live through the Famine. In any disaster situation, if you are a parent, the first thing on your mind is "what will I do with my child?" So how did those women cope watching their children starve to death?
Did you find it heartbreaking to write, particularly when you were talking about the Famine?
It was hard some of it, some of the reading was very hard too. It's hard to take on board the sheer tragedy and sorrow of what people go through when you read about the hurricane in New Orleans, for instance, or the tsunami where people have lost their entire families. I am the sort of person who can get this in my head in the middle of the night so, I suppose, if you can actually do something creative it's better than getting depressed about it. I can't help but put myself there and identify with people. I do push myself sometimes and it's not always comfortable. It can be pretty awful and very distressing.
It is hard to comprehend that the Famine ever happened isn't it?
It is. You're not talking about thousands of years ago and you're not talking about something that happened on the other side of the world, you're talking about something that happened right here. Next to one of the richest nations in the world, literally on their doorstep. It is unbelievable that it could happen. I knew there was an Irish Famine but I didn't know the full extent of it. I remember thinking "well, if the potatoes failed, why didn't they eat something else?"
It was an unsustainable system but some of the attitudes that I came across were quite appalling. The English parliament at the time was awful. Their utilitarian attitude was that the population is too big and we can only get a modern agriculture system by getting rid of a lot of people. The human cost of that was people dying, mothers watching their starving children die, and the English attitude to it was "it is God's will".
Would you say it's one of the hardest books you've written?
Yes. That and Turn Again Home [long-listed for the Man Booker prize in 2003]. They both involved a lot of research and some quite distressing stuff. I had to go to some very dark places to write both those books.
So what's next?
I'm going to some dark places in the next one as well. I have become interested in this woman called Margaret Catchpole. It is going to be a novel, based on a real woman. She lived in Suffolk and at the end of the eighteenth century she was transported to the colonies. It is fascinating because the eighteenth century is so weird. The bit I'm writing about is the Age of Enlightenment, supposedly, and you have these great minds making strides forward in science. At the same time you have public executions and people being burned at the stake. They had this incredibly horrific system of crime and punishment - you could be hanged for stealing a handkerchief. It's fascinating. After that I might do something lighter. I've had a good response to it so far.
Do you have any recommendations for our readers?
Have you read The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break by Steven Sherrill? It's very good. I don't know if he's written anything else but it is well worth a read. I'd also recommend Hilary Mantel's new book, Beyond Black. It is dark. She's a dark writer, but she's also a very good writer.
