Tell me about your new novel, Charlotte.
It’s about novelist Charlotte Brontë and her time in Ireland. The tragedy of the Brontës is a persistent trope – but she was happy during her short marriage to Irish man Arthur Nicholls and enjoyed her month-long honeymoon here. It also explores the subsequent evolution of the Brontë myth.
What is the attraction of Charlotte Brontë as a character?
She was creative, independent, courageous, proactive, willing to take a chance. She created one of fiction’s most indelible characters in Jane Eyre and gave her a characteristic she possessed: both knew their own worth.
How significant were the Brontë sisters’ Irish roots?
Patrick Brontë, their father, was a natural-born shanachie like his father before him. The sisters grew up hearing stories and inventing their own – at school, Charlotte terrified the other girls with her ghost tales. This storytelling experience, drawn from the Irish side of their family, was an invaluable apprenticeship. The broad outline of Wuthering Heights is a family story passed on by Patrick, although Emily made it uniquely her own. All of their novels incorporate a theme of rebellion – whether they knew it or not, that springs from their Irish heritage.
You allude to their uncle having been a United Irishman.
The Co Down Bruntys (before later generations became Brontëfied) came from a mixed background: Charlotte’s grandfather Hugh Brunty was Protestant and grandmother Alice McClory was Catholic. The United Irishmen were founded on nonsectarian principles and William Brunty, Patrick’s brother, was out in ‘98 and fought at the Battle of Ballynahinch. Afterwards, he went into hiding.
You co-curated the first all-Ireland, all-women’s festival, Derry/Donegal’s YES festival. Tell us more.
I believe in an agreed Ireland and meeting one another, listening to other viewpoints is a way to find common ground. I created No Ordinary Women as a series of public discussion events at the YES festival in June. A stellar group of women spoke, including Mary Robinson, Miriam O’Callaghan, Caoilfhionn Gallagher, Susan McKay, Ailbhe Smyth and Orla Guerin. Audiences were intergenerational, engaged and articulate – a great buzz developed. Mrs Robinson gave brilliant advice to young women at her Q+A about feeling the fear and doing it anyway. What a mentor! It was funded by Arts Over Borders, with financial backing from the EU, Department of Foreign Affairs and others. And I mention the funders because these happenings are expensive to put on – support is essential.
[ Edith by Martina Devlin: Somerville and lossOpens in new window ]
How does your career as a journalist feed into your creative writing?
It teaches the importance of keeping people’s attention with your storytelling. Also, I would lie down in front of a double-decker before missing a deadline and that’s due to my training as a reporter.
You’ve interviewed many authors. Is Anthony Burgess still your favourite?
Burgess was fascinating – a story for another day – but has been supplanted by my friend Carlo Gébler because I love his talent, kindness, breadth of knowledge and how the mind works.
What are the pros and cons of historical fiction based on real people or events?
I like a deep dive into research and a real person leaves a trail. Also, there is name recognition for readers. But sometimes it feels like an act of plunder.
You once told me: ‘It’s very difficult for women writers to set books in contemporary times and not be packaged as chick lit.’ There is a strong feminist thread to your work, from The House Where it Happened, a novel about the last witchcraft trial in Ireland in 1711, to a novel about Edith Somerville, plays about Nora Barnacle and Countess Markievicz, and short stories Truth & Dare. Which is the favourite of your 12 books?
The House Where It Happened because those women convicted of witchcraft were silenced twice over: their innocent pleas disbelieved, sidelined by history afterwards. That’s why I campaigned for a plaque in Islandmagee to list their names. It took eight years but is in place now. People will see it and ask about them. They are visible again.
Which projects are you working on?
A novel set in the early 1800s with a woman artist protagonist.
Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage?
It’s my favourite kind of trip. The Bronte parsonage at Haworth in Yorkshire; Edith Somerville’s Drishane House in Castletownshend; George Bernard Shaw’s house in Hertfordshire (a painting by Somerville hangs on one of its walls); Ibsen’s apartment in Oslo, conveniently near his local; Ernest Hemingway’s in Cuba, where I spotted a copy of Dracula by Bram Stoker in a book stack in his loo.
What is the best writing advice you have heard?
Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.
Who do you admire the most?
Marian Keyes for the generous way she uses her fame to give other writers a leg up.
You are supreme ruler for a day. Which law do you pass or abolish?
Free public transport. Let’s take the climate crisis seriously.
[ Lights, camera, fiction: Martina Devlin on making video trailers for her booksOpens in new window ]
Which current book, film and podcast would you recommend?
Juliana Adelman’s debut novel The Grateful Water. Immersive storytelling, vivid characters and setting, a gritty underbelly.
Which public event affected you most?
The Good Friday Agreement. It changed outcomes. People are alive today because of it.
The most remarkable place you have visited?
Iceland: dramatic landscape, geysers, the Northern Lights. I still mourn a pair of lost gloves bought there.
Your most treasured possession?
He owns me rather than the reverse but I am besotted with our cat Chekhov (don’t tell JD Vance). He’s a 10-year-old tabby and Jennifer Johnston helped name him. I think of her often: such talent.
What is the most beautiful book that you own?
The Price of my Soul, Bernadette Devlin’s memoir, because it was my father’s. It’s a dog-eared old paperback but when I handle it I’m touching something he held, read and valued.
Which writers, living or dead, would you invite to your dream dinner party?
Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, so they could meet: Shelley was days old when her mother died; Margaret Atwood because she is rock ‘n’ roll; Somerville and Ross to find out how they felt about my fictionalisation – risky, because they might voice objections.
The best and worst things about where you live?
Best: near the sea and friends, cycle paths, Lexicon Library and Cultural Centre. Worst: loss of useful small shops, replaced by an ocean of coffee shops.
What is your favourite quotation?
‘I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.’ – Mary Wollstonecraft.
Who is your favourite fictional character?
It’s a pair: Cait and Baba in The Country Girls trilogy, that taboo-busting work by Edna O’Brien. Utterly irrepressible, they stand the test of time.
A book to make me laugh?
Kevin Barry’s The Heart In Winter. As soon as I finished, I wanted to go right back to the beginning and read it again.
A book that might move me to tears?
Catherine Dunne’s A Good Enough Mother. No one writes like her. No one makes us think hard about ourselves like her.
- Charlotte is published by The Lilliput Press
