interview with Claire Keegan

Why does the book end with Daddy, I keep calling him, keep warning him.

Daddy. I think that maybe I should have ended the book with Daddy, I warn him. I call

him Daddy". I would hope that this by this stage you would believe that she

would love to have Kinsella as her father, because she has a father who doesnt

really care for her; hes an alcoholic, hes not just a good or loving father so its

kind of a difficult place to be. Kinsella is very fond of her, and shes very fond

of him, and I think hes a decent man, and he has no children of his own any

more, so for me when she sees her Daddy coming, its very natural for her to say

Daddy but because shes in Kinsellas arms shes actually saying it to him. So

even though shes warning Kinsella that her father is coming to get her, what

shes doing in that moment is shes calling Kinsella Daddy which is something

shes wanted to do and couldnt do until this moment and she didnt plan it, and

the moment enabled her to say something that she wanted to say even though

she didnt intend it.

Why does she just call the woman woman?

I think that where I came from is a very odd place! And I dont think thats any

exaggeration! Were all a bit strange about names and a name can first of all

give you a huge amount of information about a family, if you know a surname.

Whose son you are, whose daughter you are.

The second thing about a name is that it really can be affectionate to call

someone by their name and I remember when I went to New Orleans to go to

university when I was 17 people introducing themselves to me and to other

people and I found it very strange to have my name said and my hand shaken. It

just seemed like a huge and adult formality. Adults would have names for each

other which had degrees of distance and affection. Children if they were not

given a name to address someone by or us - if you were brought into the House

and you were the girl and I was Mrs Kinsella, if I did not say to you Call me Edna

or Auntie Edna or Mrs Kinsella - you would not know what to call me. So you

couldnt call me anything. It was a way of keeping you at arms length, by not

telling you what you can call me or how you can address me. I think one of the

things that Mrs Kinsella did was she did not want to get too fond of the girl; I

think she had a fear of getting too fond of a child who she knew she would have

to lose at the end of the summer. And so one of the ways she handled this - and

I think handled it well - was to give her no name to address her by. Its again

the power of naming or not giving someone a name. Also its a story about when

youre a child you really dont know whats going on a lot of the time and when

youre in a strange place with people youve never met before or have no memory

of ever having met, youre landed in deep water and youre not quite sure how to

carry on and with this situation I think that not being told what to call her was

part of the portrait of not knowing what was going on.

Did you ever think about continuing the story or did you want to leave it as

just a bit ambiguous?

I dont feel it is ambiguous. I felt the story was finished, and I feel that every

single story is completed by its reader, not by its writer. Thats the way I like

to read. And everything I had to say about the circumstances of these people I

said in the number of pages I had. I also think that every story is incomplete.

Most of the work in a piece of fiction is done by the reader, not the writer. Its

what the writer stokes up in the reader. Each readers private life, secret life,

comes out. Imagination is stoked by the text. No two people will ever read the

same book.

At the end why is Mrs Kinsella crying? As though she is she crying not for

one now, but for two?

Well, you have the right answer! Whatever you think. But for me there is a child

who almost drowned and the weight of the bucket of water nearly killed her,

and I think that Mrs Kinsella up until the point she left her home was suffering

imagined loss of the girl on top of the loss of her own son and it was only after

she left her back to the relative physical safety of her home that she felt the

relief and could cry. We often cry out of relief. For me, that is what she was

suffering from or experiencing at that moment. But she could have been driving

up that lane to tell those people that your daughter has drowned. I think that

she was living with that.

Mrs Kinsella is quite realistic about the girl: she knew that she would go back to

her family. Perhaps Kinsella hoped she mightnt in a stronger way or a less

realistic way. Mrs Kinsella didnt let herself get as fond of this child as her

husband did.

Why did you write from the girls perspective and in the present tense?

Well, its her story, and shes the bridge between the two houses. I told it in

the present tense because again I wanted it to be a portrait of a piece of time,

and she didnt know when this would end or how it would end and so I wanted her

to go from day to day with the feeling of real uncertainty and I think that if Id

written it in the past tense, that would have taken some of that away. It would

have already happened rather than being something that was happening.

What inspired it?

Nobody knows where fiction comes from. We dont know how our minds work. I

dont know where what I write comes from. I did have a picture in my mind for a

long time, and that was an image of a hand over still water and the reflection on

the surface of that water, and I wanted to explore where that came from. And

I came up with this girl.

Is it a happy ending or a sad ending?

Thats up to you. Its not a way I look at life; I think its a strange way to

measure something. I dont try to be happy. I think thats a way to be miserable!

Whereas I think that if something feels good in the long-term its because

youve learned something. And so if you could gauge the piece of time she goes

through in this book as a piece of time when she learns a lot I would say that

that is a kind of happiness. And I would say she developed hugely over the

summer, and actually came of age because she was minded. Nothing flourishes

so much as that which is neglected, and is then minded. You grow really well

when you are minded. I dont mind if you think its happy or unhappy: what I

would like you to think is that it was inevitable. Good stories for me end

inevitably: after they finish you feel theres only one thing that could have

happened, and that is the thing that happened. And I think its inevitable that

she would return home, and that the Kinsellas would go back to the house with

no child.

What did you pick a girl as the main character rather than a boy?

I think a boy would be less likely to be taken away from the original home, and

left out there for the summer. I think he would be kept closer to the family,

especially if he was an only son. They say that there are very few good Irish

men in literature, good Irish fathers. So many of the fathers in our literature

are just awful and neglectful, especially when it comes to fathering a girl and

one on the things I probably wanted to do is have a good Irish father in this

story. I wanted him also to use his humour and his intelligence and energy with a

girl, rather than fostering someone who is male. I dont think Kinsella was good

to her because she was a girl. I just thought he was a decent man who enjoyed

her company. So for me it was an opportunity to explore how that would work. I

think also because he himself had lost a son, I wouldnt have wanted another boy

to come in: that might have been too symmetrical, too obviously a replacement

for the child he had lost.

Theres mention of a lost heifer. Whats the significance of this?

I dont know. I just liked the cow so I put it in! Have you ever seen a lost

heifer? No? Okay? First of all, heifers are herd animals. They dont like being

alone. Shes not going to be happy. If you saw a lost heifer on a country road,

shes probably be going to be panicking and theyre so big and powerful, and

theyre not like a horse who will run swiftly pass you - theyll panic and go

through you. Theres a wonderful quotation by Flannery OConnor, who said the

art of writing fiction is the art of creating pictures. We enjoy fiction when we

put the pictures together and they seem to come from the same place, to

belong together. It is kind of a dramatic moment to see an animal like that, a

great big beast whos alone. And I suppose you could say the whole story is

about families, and about belonging and the heifer is alone and isolated. A long

answer for a short question. But I like cows!

Where does the cover picture come from?

Its a picture taken in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris of a carousel there and

it was taken by John McGaherns wife Madeleine. She gave it to me as a

present. I just thought, theres the cover.

How easy was it to write from a childs point of view?

I minded children for years, and I got on really well with children - that sense

of wonder and that sense of freshness. I think because everyones been a child

then they think they can easily write about being a child and I do think that

isnt true. I enjoyed that part of it - seeing how different knowledge is in a

different way of looking at the world.