{"id":392960,"date":"2026-04-11T08:07:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T08:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/392960\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T08:07:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T08:07:12","slug":"i-grew-up-very-normal-yet-had-this-secret-side-that-i-thought-everyone-would-consider-foul-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/392960\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I grew up very normal, yet had this secret side that I thought everyone would consider foul\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you read Emma Donoghue\u2019s<\/a> latest novel, The Paris Express<\/a>, from 2025, which was inspired by the Montparnasse rail crash of 1895, followed by Haven<\/a>, from 2022, based on the founding of a monastery on Skellig Michael in the seventh century, then her debut novel, Stir-Fry, a coming-out story from 1994, set in the Dublin<\/a> of her youth, it is striking how dated the latter feels, while the others have a timeless quality.<\/p>\n

Donoghue, who is a strikingly cheerful, good-humoured interviewee, agrees that Stir-Fry feels as if it is set in another world. \u201cIt\u2019s as if Ireland changed so fast that the geological layers are compressed,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Stir-Fry\u2019s student protagonist is so innocent and so closeted that she is almost in Narnia. She has no inkling that her flatmates are gay \u2013 or that she is herself, for that matter.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s funny. Contemporary fiction<\/a> dates much faster. One reviewer thought Stir-Fry was set in the 1960s. Of course, that was Ireland in the 1990s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donoghue is chatting via Zoom from London, Ontario, where she set up home with her Canadian partner, whom she met while studying at Cambridge University.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is not such a gap between the two countries now,\u201d she says. \u201cI could live fine in Ireland, but in 1990, that was a good time to go. It lifted the crushing weight of being the only gay in the village \u2013 not that I was ever in a village.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stir-Fry was autobiographical in so far as it dealt with a student coming out, but whereas the writer was a suburban Dubliner crossing the road to University College Dublin, her protagonist was a country girl in the Edna O\u2019Brien tradition, giving the story more of a shape by adding cultural tension in the stranger-who-comes-to-town mould. <\/p>\n

Her second novel, Hood, was more autobiographical, based on her convent school, Muckross Park College. \u201cLike many writers, I needed to start with my own life material.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donoghue was 14 when she realised both that she was gay and that she wanted to be a writer.<\/p>\n

\"AuthorAuthor Emma Donoghue. Photograph: Woodgate <\/p>\n

\u201cLike many teenage writers, love was my great theme. Falling in love with a girl at 14 promoted a huge tsunami of poetry. So it felt as if there was a libidinal impulse in the writing and also a drive towards empathy and understanding people who weren\u2019t myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

It gave her a passionate, secret subject to write about. \u201cBut, equally, being a writer helped me come out. I\u2019d sold two books to Penguin. I didn\u2019t want my mother to read about them in a book review in The Irish Times. That gave me a deadline to come out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donoghue\u2019s parents were \u201cpretty liberal for Irish Catholics with eight children\u201d. Her father, the critic and UCD academic Denis Donoghue, confronted her about it when she was 19, telling her not to stop going to Mass and fretting that she might not get her first. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe feared that lesbianism was going to be so distracting, so potent. I assured him I would still get my first-class honours, which I did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her mother had already guessed when Emma was 16 but never spoke to her or her husband about it. \u201cWe had one of those classic Irish silences about it for five years, so she had got used to the idea. She said something lovely like, \u2018You\u2019ll have to blaze your own trail, but you\u2019re good at that.\u2019 No matter how many fans you have, if your family have rejected you there\u2019s no healing that wound.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donoghue believes that being gay taught her that bonds between human beings come in all forms and made her interested in the outsider, the scapegoat, freaks, the enslaved. <\/p>\n

About a third of my books have a same-sex storyline, but I feel very relaxed about it.<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Emma Donoghue<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m fascinated by the underdog. I grew up very normal and approved of, and yet I had this secret side that I thought everyone would consider foul. Every one of us can be the nice normal person and the monster.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor every opportunity that I missed because of someone\u2019s homophobia, I\u2019m sure I\u2019ve been given others because of the novelty factor.\u201d <\/p>\n

She was on The Late Late Show twice in the early 1990s, talking about her work. \u201cIt did feel like instant fame.\u201d The programme\u2019s paternalistic host, Gay Byrne, feared she might regret it later. \u201cI assured him I wouldn\u2019t suffer. <\/p>\n

\u201cI remember some Irish journalist ringing up and asking what do Irish lesbians think about this, and I thought, I\u2019m living in England, am I the only one you could find? Luckily there was a lesbian on Big Brother\u201d \u2013 the Irish woman Anna Nolan \u2013 \u201cwho was quickly more famous than me, and I thought, what a relief to pass the torch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moving to Cambridge and then to Canada gave Donoghue psychological freedom. \u201cIt felt like a more aerated culture, things were looser, part of a colourful palette.\u201d <\/p>\n

She was determined, though, not to be defined by her sexuality. \u201cEvery writer struggles with how much to represent their home community, whether that be class, ethnicity or disability, anything that marks you. About a third of my books have a same-sex storyline, but I feel very relaxed about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donoghue who is also a screenwriter, playwright and literary historian, is one of Ireland\u2019s most versatile writers, always ready to try something new and able to switch effortlessly between genres.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that I enjoy the work enough that I will always come back to it, so I\u2019m happy to be distracted to buy a pair of flip-flops while researching something. Similarly,\u201d she says, laughing, \u201cif I am working on the novel and suddenly get an idea for a short story, a little adulterous weekend with the short story will just refresh me for the marital commitment of the novel. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy process is quite lighthearted and promiscuous and open to whatever happens. If I\u2019m on holiday and suddenly get an idea for something I start taking notes, whereas for some writers I think books come one at a time, and perhaps painfully and very intensely, so they have to give it their all. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents had eight children, so that\u2019s my mindset, a busy household with people coming and going. Projects are like that. I don\u2019t want to get smug and repetitious, it\u2019s good to experiment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donoghue recently wrote a screenplay based on Helen Macdonald\u2019s H Is for Hawk. \u201cI don\u2019t know why they asked me. I\u2019m not known for my knowledge of the bird kingdom. I thought it could be impossible to adapt, for it\u2019s a multigenre nonfiction book, but it was so beautifully written. I love that kind of task. I work quite fast. Also, with film writing you don\u2019t know which one is going to make it, so it is good to intersperse it with other things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her first musical, The Wind Coming over the Sea, about an Irish family emigrating to Canada in famine times, premiered in 2025. \u201cThe theme is oddly timely. There are such waves of hostility to emigration that it feels political to do a show about an immigrant who is a vulnerable, needy outsider but is also bringing all this energy, drive and hard work to the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donoghue is conscious of being part of a long tradition of Irish emigration to Canada, including the Belfast writer Brian Moore.<\/p>\n

\"BelfastBelfast writer Brian Moore also emigrated to Canada <\/p>\n

\u201cI was very aware of ancestors, comfortable moving first to England then to Canada, conscious of a long tradition in both places. I could go to the pub and hear Irish music, feel connected. It softens the sting of emigration.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been familiar with [Moore] since I was a teenager. I was at a party here in the 1990s, and some academic said to me, \u2018You\u2019ll suffer from the Brian Moore problem.\u2019 \u2018What\u2019s that?\u2019 I asked. I thought he was a very honourable ancestor. He said, \u2018Your reputation will be fatally divided between several literary traditions. You won\u2019t be 100 per cent Irish or Canadian.\u2019 <\/p>\n

\u201cI decided I wouldn\u2019t worry about my literary reputation. That\u2019s not something writers should be trying to shape themselves. We should just work on our projects \u2013 and, if people like them, reputation will accrue.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Brian Moore\u2019s hotels: Time to revisit this neglected author in his centenary yearOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Such labelling is retrograde, anyway, she believes. \u201cSo many of us live hybrid, complex lives. I loved Gethan Dick\u2019s novel Water in the Desert, Fire in the Night. She is Irish but lives in France. It struck me as so unbounded by the conventions of Irish fiction. What sense does it make to say to her, \u2018Pick a side\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n

Donoghue shows me her treadmill desk, where she exercises while researching a topic or dealing with emails. \u201cIt is perfect for that, whereas if I want to write a brand-new scene I do like to sit down. A lot of our day is not absolutely raw creation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her computer screen is balanced to an ergonomic height on The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing \u2013 the corrected version, featuring volumes four and five, to include women writers. Donoghue contributed a lesbian section.<\/p>\n

She credits Ailbhe Smyth with opening her eyes to the absence of women from the English syllabus at UCD, bar Jane Austen, Emily Bront\u00eb and Emily Dickinson. But didn\u2019t her father set the curriculum? \u201cHe was a gentle patriarch; we just so enjoyed talking about books,\u201d she says. \u201cWe had more in common than we had differences. He may only have written about canonical women authors, but he did take them very seriously. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe was so proud that I was a writer. He sent me a lovely postcard after each book. He gave me ideas for stories, told me, \u2018[John] Ruskin had a terrible wedding night when he couldn\u2019t consummate his marriage \u2013 you should look at that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The Paris Express features a sympathetically drawn anarchist would-be suicide bomber. Was it influenced by Ireland\u2019s home-grown revolutionaries? <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was part of the mix, but I was just as interested in the idea of the suicide bomber, a vulnerable person, rather than a cold-blooded killer. That wouldn\u2019t interest me. My dad was Northern, and retained a certain sympathy for the 32-county ideal, but he was repelled by violence. My family was typical of Southern Catholics. I grew up thinking of the IRA as that mad shower north of the Border who were kneecapping people in our names.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MargaretMargaret Atwood is one of Donoghue’s ‘liberating role models’ who turned to historical fiction. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw <\/p>\n

The Paris Express reminded me of Robert Harris. \u201cOh, I am honoured. I\u2019ve never been compared to him, but I have all his books. I love him. Isn\u2019t he marvellous at wearing his historical knowledge lightly, no sense of \u2018Let me share what I know\u2019 with the readers, just relaxed enough to share tiny details?<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember being struck by literary writers such as Julian Barnes and Margaret Atwood turning to historical fiction, who didn\u2019t seem to be weighed down by genre conventions. They were liberating as role models.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donoghue did find The Paris Express\u2019s big cast of characters a challenge. Some weren\u2019t earning their keep after a few scenes, so she had to go back and cut them out of every scene. It required a lot of darning.<\/p>\n

\u201cYet to write about a train is to commit yourself to a large group. It\u2019s not a car, it\u2019s mass transit. I needed that sweep of society. I can almost picture readers walking away, \u2018Oh no, another character\u2019, or medieval monks, or vomit or smallpox pustules. That\u2019s always a key moment where I recommit to the book. Those readers weren\u2019t going to like it anyway, so there is no point pursuing them or watering it down to suit them.\u201d<\/p>\n

She is fearless at this stage. There are no subjects she wouldn\u2019t touch, however oddly she might approach them. They would be like exotic holidays for her to tackle. <\/p>\n

There are limits, though. One of her future novels is set during a war, \u201cbut there will be no battle scenes\u201d. She had to consult friends for the card-game scenes in Frog Music and for anything to do with alcohol, as she is teetotal. Her next novel, Blaze, which is due in 2027, is set in the near future, \u201ca first for me, apart from a novella. Again, I feel like a newbie.\u201d<\/p>\n

Haven is possibly my favourite of her works. Like Edna O\u2019Brien and Brian Moore, whose novella Catholics similarly deals with a wayward offshoot of the church on a remote Irish island, she has moved from the personal to the political.<\/p>\n

\u201cWriting books set in the past is often sneered at as escape into convention, but actually, no, it\u2019s the broader picture, historically and politically, bigger subjects. I don\u2019t know why anyone would stay limited to the era they are living in any more than the place they are living in. If you can write about Japan, why can\u2019t you write about the seventh century?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AuthorAuthor Emma Donoghue. Photograph: Woodgate <\/p>\n

There is something darkly funny, an ecological parable, about these ancient monks worshipping God on an island so barren they are reduced to cooking puffins on a fire fuelled by burning puffins, a \u201cperfectly hideous\u201d historical fact that Donoghue found scouring records from 17th-century Newfoundland.<\/p>\n

Haven\u2019s dictatorial leader refuses to trade with the mainland. Is he partly inspired by \u00c9amon de Valera? \u201cNot consciously, but unconsciously it\u2019s all in there. Having grown up in Ireland and felt, \u2018This culture is too small,\u2019 and having made my escape, I would have a natural nervousness about the island\u2019s isolationism and, above all, cultural purity. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very feminist book. Gender comes up all the time. The leader thinks that by leaving women behind he can leave all bad stuff behind. That false notion of purity gives me the willies.\u201d<\/p>\n

I am struck by the unlikely resurrection of the Catholic novel, from Sally Rooney\u2019s Intermezzo to Niamh Mulvey\u2019s The Amendments. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Sally Rooney: \u2018There is something Christian about my work, even if I would not describe myself as religiousOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very interesting. In both Haven and The Wonder I had to go deep into my Catholic heritage and wanted to avoid knee jerk judgmentalism, because in both cases, whether mid-19th century or seventh century, I found a lot to treasure as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust as early Christians divided God up into Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I tried to divide up Christianity. I gave the more hateful aspects to Art, the practical, sturdy bits to Cormac\u201d \u2013 named after Cormac Kinsella, the book\u2019s publicist \u2013 \u201cand made the young monk the St Francis of Assisi at one with nature. You can\u2019t read St Patrick\u2019s Breastplate and not be moved by it.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I turn to Donoghue\u2019s most successful novel, Room, inspired by the notorious Josef Fritzl case, she congratulates me for getting an hour into the interview without mentioning it. Why does she think it was so successful? <\/p>\n

\u201cI think it would have worked even if it was not based on a real case. I was lucky enough to happen on a storyline that has an archetypal quality. Many people feel their lives are too small; they are imprisoned in some sense and want to escape to a bigger life. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe highly specific and weird storyline of Ma in the locked shed does remind people of their own childhoods or bad marriages or other times their lives felt limited. People in China and Iran have written it is clearly a political allegory.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people were surprised I included the second half. They thought it would just be an escape story, but the second half is crucial, all those moments when Jack is missing Room; he prefers a smaller world. A lot of people have those feelings when they leave their old country \u2013 the nostalgia of the emigrant, confused feelings about the bad part of the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Pull of the Stars got its most passionate readers from doctors and nurses. Room has a much greater range. All I can claim credit for is I knew the child\u2019s perspective would be fresh. Kidnapped women had been written about before. The defamiliarisation device also made it bearable. Jack is not unhappy; he doesn\u2019t feel he is in a nightmare because of his mother\u2019s love.<\/p>\n

\"EmmaEmma Donoghue accepting the Best First Screenplay award for Room at the 2016 Film Independent Spirit Awards, in California. Photograph: Kevork Djansezian\/Getty <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was writing Room I thought a lot about child narrators such as in Roddy Doyle\u2019s Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, a novel I not only loved but also noticed because he won the Booker with it, but also LP Hartley\u2019s The Go-Between, and Spies, by Michael Frayn, the painful ironies of what a child knows, especially about sex, which makes no sense to kids.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason I hit on the storyline is I had two small children. That sensitised me to the psychological bond between mother and child, the perfect convergence of motherhood and the storyline.\u201d<\/p>\n

So the pram, or double buggy, in the hall was a help, not a hindrance. \u201cMotherhood also made me write more thoroughly, because I had less time.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was lucky to get published when life was really cheap, living in a housing co-op in Cambridge<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Emma Donoghue<\/p>\n

Donoghue\u2019s son and daughter turn up in all her books. \u201cThey find it quite amusing how they morph in different books. Both kids have a very hearty appetite. In The Wonder I remember thinking if this was 1850s Ireland, and if you were rewarded for not eating, how might all this intelligence and wit be funnelled into a weird form of mysticism? <\/p>\n

\u201cThey end up inspiring characters who are not very like them but have something of their energy. Finn picked up Haven. \u2018Am I the weird, gangly monk who\u2019s climbing up the cliffs?\u2019 \u2018Yes, you are.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Donoghue is slightly embarrassed to admit what a cold-blooded Apollonian planner she is. \u201cPantsers\u201d \u2013 who make it up as they go along \u2013 \u201cget all the limelight, this myth of writing as an inspired fever dream, like taking drugs and going into the Outback, a vision quest. <\/p>\n

\u201cWriting may have elements of vision and mystery, like \u2018How did that idea drop in my lap?\u2019 but the doing of it, especially a full-length novel, requires a lot of planning and organisation. <\/p>\n

\u201cI bristle a bit that it sounds uncool, but writing requires a lot of moving the pieces around. Planning is very liberating, because if you have a half-hour free, the Scrivener creative-writing programme is a lot of boxes within boxes, so you can work on one little scene, as opposed to waiting to be completely in the zone. <\/p>\n

\u201cI want to be able to snatch time as it arises, so I have it all on my computer. I can see how it might help moving scenes from a longer to a shorter chapter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donoghue\u2019s English degree and PhD help, \u201cquite apart from the chats with Dad on D\u00fan Laoghaire pier\u201d.<\/p>\n

Did the success of Room free or pressurise her?<\/p>\n

\u201cI was lucky to get published when life was really cheap, living in a housing co-op in Cambridge. I didn\u2019t have a mortgage and kids; I have not felt the pressure of earning to constrain my art. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat Room did was give me many more readers, not so much the money but more people will take a punt on reading my books. I did think it could be like a gun to my head, but it was such a one-off, a freaky storyline, that I couldn\u2019t churn out a series like that. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Author Mary Costello: \u2018Gaza has disabled me. I think, how could I go into a room and make up stories?\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cI will never, ever write a sequel to that book. It doesn\u2019t require one. Let the success of this book just be a rising tide of confidence, but I don\u2019t have to be on the bestseller list every time.\u201d<\/p>\n

She loves adapting her work, collaborating with Lenny Abrahamson on a screenplay or Cora Bisset on a stage production, embracing the way the story naturally needs to change. \u201cI\u2019m not focused on protecting or retaining my story, just enjoying what becomes of it in a different form.\u201d<\/p>\n

Screenplays, Donoghue has observed, are a much more modern format than the novel yet much more rigid. The novel has no rules. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis all has to do with the gluteal muscle,\u201d she says. \u201cIf it\u2019s a time-based art form, like a play or a film, people are sitting down,\u201d she says. I think instinctively of the Se\u00e1n O\u2019Casey trilogy at the Abbey, whose seats make Ryanair\u2019s feel like armchairs. \u201cWith novels, people can take their own time.\u201d<\/p>\n

This interview is extracted from A Hosting: Interviews with Irish Writers 1991-2025, which will be published by Lilliput Press on Thursday, April 16th<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you read Emma Donoghue\u2019s latest novel, The Paris Express, from 2025, which was inspired by the Montparnasse…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":392961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[174025,6489,289,174024,42232,159878,93,114382,61,60,121455,97463,174026,39935,174027,125724],"class_list":{"0":"post-392960","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-anna-nolan","9":"tag-book-reviews","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-denis-donoghue","12":"tag-edna-o-brien","13":"tag-emma-donoghue","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-gay-byrne","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-julian-barnes","19":"tag-margaret-atwood","20":"tag-robert-harris","21":"tag-university-college-dublin-ucd","22":"tag-women-s-writing","23":"tag-women-writers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}