An interview with Emma Donoghue

In 2000, Canada-based Irish author Emma Donoghue jumped to the top of the bestseller's list with her gripping historical fiction Slammerkin. Her other books include the historically inspired short story collection The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits and the contemporary novel Stirfry. This year she released Life Mask, a novel based on the true-life scandal caused by a love triangle between an artist, an actress and aristocrat in late eighteenth century London. She talks to The Writer about her new book and the joys and pitfalls of penning "fiction that walks arm in arm with fact".

I understand the inspiration for Slammerkin came from a newspaper clipping, where did you come across the true story on which Life Mask is based?
In Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi's diary, Thraliana, where at various points in the 1780s and 90s she records scandalous gossip about a love triangle between the actress Eliza Farren, the Earl of Derby, and the sculptor Anne Damer.

Both books are set in eighteenth century London, how much research do you do when you're writing a work of historical fiction?
Endless! If you want to get past the familiar images of an era, you have to trawl widely for detail that's both authentic and quirky. And in this case I wasn't just researching the period but the complex social relations of many real people over a ten-year period.

Why do you think you are drawn to write what you have described as "fiction that walks arm in arm with fact"?
This is a puzzle to me, actually; it would be much simpler to simply make it up! I think the historian in me longs to piece together stories that are in some sense true, especially about long-forgotten people. And it makes for plots that have the peculiar, unpredictable twists and turns of real life. And far from minding, modern readers seems to really enjoy the element of reality in the fiction.

Do complications arise when you are writing, from the fact that some of the people in the books are real as opposed to characters?
As with any book, you have to make a set of rules for yourself (point of view, scope, genre, tone), which in this case would include how closely I'm intending to stick to the facts. In Slammerkin, I had only a handful of facts to start with, so I was very free to invent. Whereas at many points in the much more factually-based Life Mask I let myself change something to serve the story - a location, the order of events - but never what I would consider the emotional truth of the situation.

Where do you draw the line between imagination and historical record, is it a question of filling in the gaps or do the characters take on a life of their own?
Even if you have many rich sources for what happened, as soon as you present it as fiction - with thoughts, conversations, scenes - you're necessarily inventing an interior life for the characters, just as if you'd made them up. So it really doesn't save you any work to write about historical characters, far from it, because there's all the research and the imaginative effort too!

I loved the motif of the coloured ribbon in Slammerkin, and clothing/dress is also important in Life Mask. Do you make a conscious decision to create a very visual world in your novels or is it something that happens naturally when you write?
Both novels are obsessed with class difference, and clothes were probably the crucial marker of that difference in the eighteenth century, especially for women. My writing style really varies according to what the book requires, so these two books are deliberately very visual, probably more than my others. But to answer the question more generally, yes, whatever I do is deliberate! - those patterns of imagery don't happen by accident.

Did you always write?
Yes, since about 7.

What made you want to be a writer?
The fun of it.

What is the best piece of advice that you've been given about writing?
None that I can recall, it's a matter of learning by doing.

Do you have a writing routine?
More of a one than I used to, because we have a baby now. So my routine is, drop him off at daycare, work like bejaysus for four hours, and then rush off to collect him again!

What writers do you admire?
Many, including Jane Smiley, Roddy Doyle, Carol Shields, Terry Pratchett.

What was the last good book you read?
Audrey Niffenegger's fabulously romantic The Time Traveller's Wife.

Are you working on anything new you can tell us about at the moment?
My third contemporary novel, about long-distance relationships and immigration, set half in Ireland, half in Canada.

Slammerkin is one of The Writer's recommended pageturners.

Read what Bibliofemme's Techie thought of The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger here