Today sees the publication of my fifth book, my third short story collection to be published by Arlen House, which is currently celebrating its 50th year. Whereas my two previous works, When Black Dogs Sing and Nobody Needs to Know, draw their inspiration from contemporary life and its complications, The Marionette and the Maestro revels in the fantastical.
Set from the late 19th to the early 20th century, these stories unfold in 11 European towns and cities. The cast of characters includes a toymaker, an embalmer, a puppeteer and a composer. Trickery, murder and magic are the order of the day and occur in such romantic cities as Prague, Vienna and St Petersburg.
They say write the stories you want to read, and this is exactly what I have done in this new collection. It couldn’t be further from the realism of my previous work, and that includes my two crime novels set in Dublin.
I have always been a fan of both gothic literature and magic realism. Some of my favourite books include: Perfume by Patrick Suskind, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter, The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton…. I could go on! I love the richness of the prose, the dazzle of the imagery, the sheer flight of imagination and the transportation that such stories involve, and I began to wonder why I had never tried my hand at those stories I love best.
RM Block
So I came up with the idea of writing historical stories set in various European cities. My approach to writing this collection was vastly different. Whereas usually I wait for an image to present itself and bluster off into the great unknown – stories are after all organic – this time I did a little preparatory work. In my notebook, I made a list of possible settings. Some of them didn’t make it into this collection, but I have a feeling I’m not quite done yet and there may be a second volume in the offing.
Apart from cities, my preparation included other lists: interesting occupations for characters; the elements that create that fairy-tale landscape I wished to capture: cobbled streets, gas lamps, musical instruments, antiques; and the places where such stories could unfold: old towns with their gothic architecture, a marionette theatre, the Vienna Opera House, a palace in St Petersburg, a windmill and a crypt…
Writing these stories has been an utterly freeing experience. When my last collection Nobody Needs to Know came out in 2021, I wrote an article about the truth in fiction. I was surprised when compiling those stories how many truths were embedded in them, whether those truths came from my own experiences or things I had heard or read about or were happening in the world.
Ding Dong Johnny was based on a horrific experience we had with a psychotic neighbour and was 90 per cent based on fact. Another, though fiction, dealt with the death of a friend. They were set in familiar Irish locations, whether on the Dart, a pub, a house or a workplace that was known to me.
The stories in The Marionette and the Maestro are, for the most part, pure imagination. I would best describe them as dark fairytales for adults. My favourite story in the collection, Charlie Boy, is set in Bruges, which I visited with my husband one new year. The imagery immediately lent itself to the type of story I wanted to write – I still recall the horses and carriages appearing out of the winter fog, the little windows of the chocolateries lit with Christmas lights. It is, particularly at that time of year, a magical city.
The title story is set in Prague, another city we visited during the winter holidays. At the National Marionette Theatre we saw a marionette show of Don Giovanni and later took a tour backstage where we were allowed to try our hand at manoeuvering the puppets, which are much heavier and more difficult to manipulate than they look.
In this story, I decided that the protagonist would be the wood carver commissioned to create these wonderful creatures. He creates a marionette in the likeness of a woman he was once obsessed with and when he meets a young music student from the Prague Conservatoire he shares his ambition to write an opera in which she will star.
Another incredible place, which inspired a gothic story, is the Catacombe dei Cappuccini di Palermo, a creepy but fascinating indoor cemetery where more than 8,000 dead are displayed fully clothed, some in poses, such as a boy and a girl side by side in a rocking chair. Many are now mere skeletons but others such as two-year-old Rosalia Lombardo, embalmed in 1920, remain entirely recognisable.
Alfredo, the protagonist of my story The Embalmer, is named after Alfredo Salafia, who embalmed Rosalia and also an Italian prime minister, Francesco Crispi. Salafia, who did not finish medical school, was a self-taught taxidermist and embalmer who it was believed for many years had taken his formula to the grave. It was later discovered among his handwritten notes. The secrecy around Salafia’s formula inspired my story; the rest, of course, is fiction. I would urge anyone (not faint-hearted) visiting Palermo to visit the crypt as it’s a fascinating place.
Of the 11 locations where these stories are set, I have visited nine; the other two I researched. It is important for me to see a place to accurately describe it, but in the act of writing the stories, I allowed my imagination to run wild, to create fairytale or nightmarish scenarios. Not all of the stories are dark; some I hope are rather humorous, because, let’s face it, in a world where atrocities are occurring, we all need a little escapism. We could all use a night at the palace ball!
I hope that readers will enjoy travelling back in time to the opulence and the decadence of Europe at the turn of the last century, that they will lose themselves on those cobbled streets and savour the exoticism of the marionette’s world.
The Marionette and the Maestro launches in Dublin on October 21st at 6pm in The Teachers’ Club, Parnell Square, and in Galway on October 26th at 6pm in Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop. It will be a double launch with writer Geraldine Mills who launches her new story collection Survival Games, also from Arlen House.
