Like R\u00f3is\u00edn, the protagonist in her new novel, Stations, she left the North when she was 12, moved with her family to the South but never truly settled before emigrating to London for a spell. She has lived in Sligo for 20 years and is happy there but will forever be a blow-in. \u201cI don\u2019t know how to be in the world except as an outsider. My home place doesn\u2019t exist any more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sligo and its hinterland served as the backdrop for most of The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac<\/a>, her brilliant short-story collection, from 2021. Her native North came alive in her award-winning, bestselling debut novel, Trespasses<\/a>, from 2022, a Troubles love story made into a Channel 4 series<\/a> starring Gillian Anderson.<\/p>\n Stations, which is her second novel, starts off in a Kildare town much like Naas, where she moved from Holywood, Co Down, after one loyalist attack too many on the family pub. But it quickly shifts to London, where Kennedy lived long enough as a young woman to capture its essence.<\/p>\n Stations is a love story, too, albeit an unrequited one, but it is as much about family and friendships, shadowed by abuse and addiction yet leavened by wit and warmth. It also proudly takes its place alongside If I Could Read the Sky, by Timothy O\u2019Grady and Steve Pyke, and The Grass Arena, by John Healy, both namechecked in the text, and JM O\u2019Neill\u2019s novels Duffy Is Dead and Open Cut as part of the London-Irish story. \u201cI am operating in some kind of tradition,\u201d Kennedy says.<\/p>\n \u2018There was a lot of anxiety in our house. The phone would ring, and it might be that a bomb had just gone off in the pub\u2019<\/p>\n \u2014 \u00a0Louise Kennedy<\/p>\n The Grass Arena\u2019s opening line \u2013 \u201cMy father didn\u2019t look like he would harm anyone\u201d \u2013 echoes chillingly through Stations.<\/p>\n Starting in 1982 and spanning 25 years, it tracks the relationship of R\u00f3is\u00edn and Red from their schooldays in Kildare to a London squat and beyond, sometimes estranged but always entwined.<\/p>\n There are many autobiographical elements in Stations \u2013 jobs Kennedy has done, places she has lived, meals she has cooked. \u201cI couldn\u2019t imagine a character just moving through some kind of bland space. I need to put them in a place I know to be able to generate it or for anything to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n There are definitely parallels between R\u00f3is\u00edn\u2019s background and hers, Kennedy says. \u201cShe lived in a town near the sea, like I did, and moved to the South at 12 in 1979, like I did, and was spectacularly unpopular in school, like I was. <\/p>\n \u201cBut they left the North because her father was in the RUC, so I actually think I need to get a T-shirt made that says, \u2018My dad was never a peeler\u2019. He was an accountant in a firm on the Newtownards Road, the only Catholic in a very large workforce, so he had to look under his car for different reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n The book\u2019s title is suggestive of the transport hubs where key scenes play out but also of social standing and the depiction of Christ\u2019s Passion.<\/p>\n \u201cR\u00f3is\u00edn is certainly getting ideas above her station, going to Henley regatta, so there are class things and maybe something about mobility or aspiration as well. And I guess there\u2019s that thing about the Stations of the Cross, stumbling and falling and keeping going. The book was called Red for a while, and the German publisher is going to call it Red.\u201d<\/p>\n Kennedy has a degree in social studies from University College Dublin, and Pierre Bourdieu\u2019s concept of cultural capital is a ghost at Stations\u2019 feast. R\u00f3is\u00edn\u2019s love rival Octavia turns up with Christmas leftovers, culinary capital in the form of rich crumbs from the table of her Tory-MP father. R\u00f3is\u00edn, on the other hand, conjures up delicious meals from base ingredients: grey mince and ketchup for want of tomato puree \u2013 rags to rich ragu.<\/p>\n [\u00a0Louise Kennedy on her career change: \u2018At 45 I thought I was finished’Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n Kennedy spent almost 30 years as a chef, training alongside Irish Sloane Rangers at Alix Gardner Cookery School, then working at Bon Appetit in Malahide and Elephant & Castle in Temple Bar, opening Garravogue in Sligo for Jay Bourke and Eoin Foyle, then starting her own place there with her husband, Stephen, The Silver Apple, named for the Yeats verse \u2013 \u201cnotions, even then\u201d. <\/p>\n She worked at Hodges Figgis in the 1990s for a couple of years and used to cater for book launches. ) \u201cOne party ended up being so mental there was wine spilled all over the till. I think we might have got in trouble for that, because I don\u2019t think it was supposed to have been that much fun.\u201d <\/p>\n After we talk, Kennedy treats me to a delicious home-made lunch: quiche with bacon, scallions and Coolattin cheddar with orzo, tomatoes, pesto and Cnoc Liatroma goat\u2019s cheese, followed by raspberry-and-almond cake.<\/p>\n \u201cMy dream would have been to be a charcutier in Lyon. I used to get these organic ducks delivered and would use every single bit. I\u2019d render the fat, make confit, take the breast off the bone, keep the hearts and put them on rosemary skewers and grill them, duck liver pate. I made rillettes with whatever was left on the carcasses and stock. I had grease up to my elbows.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018I am not one of those people who\u2019s managed to carry people with me for years and years\u2019<\/p>\n \u2014 \u00a0Louise Kennedy<\/p>\n But cooking was also a way of dealing with anxiety by living on her nerves.<\/p>\n \u201cI used to get really bad panic attacks. Some of it maybe went back to how awful it was in [secondary] school, but I started having sleeping problems when I was about seven or eight. <\/p>\n \u201cThere was a lot of anxiety in our house. The phone would ring, and it might be that a bomb had just gone off in the pub. If there was a loud noise you\u2019d go to pieces. <\/p>\n \u201cNo one ever used the word \u2018trauma\u2019 then. I was really interested in food, and cheffing gave me a way of being able to support myself. You just turn up with your uniform and bag of knives and either you were shite or you weren\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n So it\u2019s little wonder that food enriches Kennedy\u2019s writing. The dinner party in Trespasses is a standout scene. In Stations there is great poignancy when R\u00f3is\u00edn is given \u201ca few Golden Wonders. The ones your father set\u201d, which she offers to cook for a friend.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t know if I\u2019d got away with that. I just wrote that and was bawling and crying and then I thought, Jesus Christ, what are they going to think, getting very emotional about the spuds?\u201d<\/p>\n Does Kennedy ever laugh when she\u2019s writing as well? \u201cSo okay, a lot of the response to this has been, \u2018I am devastated, crying my eyes out.\u2019 I\u2019m going, \u2018Does nobody think it\u2019s funny?\u2019 Because I was roaring laughing at certain times.\u201d<\/p>\n For the record, I laughed when R\u00f3is\u00edn said her father \u201cwould be best represented by a pint of Tennent\u2019s and a letter from the Child Support Agency\u201d and, later, \u201cI can\u2019t say a good word about him, it\u2019s like a form of Tourette\u2019s\u201d. And the description of Barry\u2019s girlfriend, who \u201clooked like a postulant but roared \u2018Slap me, hai\u2019 as she came, a demand that carried all over the house.\u201d<\/p>\n Another significant reference in Stations is the Rake\u2019s Progress series of satirical paintings by William Hogarth, which chart the downfall of Tom Rakewell, and which R\u00f3is\u00edn and Red see on a visit to Sir John Soane\u2019s Museum, one of Kennedy\u2019s favourite places in London. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s magic, but you\u2019d have to be in the whole of your health to go there, because there\u2019s just so much stuff.\u201d <\/p>\n Is there an obvious parallel between Tom Rakewell\u2019s decline and Red\u2019s? \u201cI think so. It starts off kind of beautiful. Maybe he\u2019s having a premonition of what might happen to him.\u201d<\/p>\n Stations spans a quarter of a century. How challenging was it to handle the passage of time? <\/p>\n \u201cIt was murder. The first couple of drafts I had too many scenes. I was carrying a lot of backstory. My editor said, \u2018Just put a date on each chapter.\u2019 That meant I didn\u2019t have to use any backstory, and I hoped that it would be okay just to drop the reader in and it\u2019s, like, you leave off in 1989 and then it\u2019s 2007. I didn\u2019t want to have passages like, \u2018In the meantime, R\u00f3is\u00edn did this and she got divorced.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n A funeral scene helps because a lot of characters gather for it. <\/p>\n Is there an argument for letting the reader do a bit of work? <\/p>\n \u201cI think so. People aren\u2019t stupid. I sometimes get resentful when things are explained to me too much. The really hard bit was trying to age R\u00f3is\u00edn. She starts off in her teens, and there\u2019s a big jump to where she\u2019s, like, 40, and she can\u2019t be slamming doors. I guess maybe my curiosity was, has she learned anything? Is she still fighting with everybody? Is her head still up her backside, blaming other people for things that she had a hand in as well? Does she regret anything?\u201d<\/p>\n One thing that surprised Kennedy was the reappearance of Barry, a peripheral character who becomes central. \u201cBarry was maybe the biggest surprise to me because he was so real to me. It was really weird. Like, I was walking around for about four months thinking I was having an affair. He was so vivid to me. It was really ridiculous.\u201d <\/p>\n Kennedy\u2019s husband needn\u2019t worry, though. \u201cBarry is still a bit of a dose.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018I have any kind of mental or emotional stress, or when it\u2019s really warm, I can\u2019t function at all\u2019<\/p>\n \u2014 \u00a0Louise Kennedy<\/p>\n Like Kennedy, R\u00f3is\u00edn is an outsider at school too. She first appeared in Belladonna, a story in Kennedy\u2019s debut collection. <\/p>\n \u201cI liked the voice and the fact that she was smart, but not as smart as she thought she was. Children in an adult world just don\u2019t really get it. I liked her character because she\u2019s not really that likable. So I guess this is her, maybe a year or two later, and I gave her a friend.<\/p>\n \u201cI am interested in relationships, not just romantic ones. I\u2019m interested in families, in friendships. I think maybe I find that fascinating because it\u2019s something that eluded me for a lot of my teens, like I have one friend who I knew in secondary school. I am not really in touch with anybody from primary school. I am not one of those people who\u2019s managed to carry people with me for years and years.\u201d<\/p>\n The second strand, which Kennedy wrote in the year that she started writing, features practically unchanged in Stations, a poignant scene where R\u00f3is\u00edn is about to head home from Victoria coach station when she meets a much older Irish immigrant in a bar. Not every Irish writer can as credibly set their work across the Irish Sea.<\/p>\n \u201cI did live in London, but I think it\u2019s just about paying attention. I think I also have a really good memory. I have a sister who\u2019s got an even better memory than me who was with me in London at the same time.\u201d <\/p>\n Kennedy was diagnosed with melanoma and had surgery in 2019, the same year she was shortlisted for the Sunday Times short story award. She was shortlisted again the following year. In 2021 her debut collection was published and the cancer returned, now stage four, \u201cso they had to bring out the big guns: immunotherapy\u201d. <\/p>\n In January 2022, four months before Trespasses came out, Kennedy was hospitalised after a severe reaction. \u201cIn about four days I\u2019d gained 5kg, all fluid. I\u2019d my head in a basin of ice water to reduce the swelling. My skin was like marzipan, itchy, coming off like paste. My pituitary gland had exploded. I hadn\u2019t produced any cortisol for 10 days. <\/p>\n \u201cThat damage is permanent, so I have to take steroids every day and carry a syringe. But if I have any kind of mental or emotional stress, or when it\u2019s really warm, I can\u2019t function at all. <\/p>\n \u201cIt made it really hard to write the book. I lived on adrenaline all my life from kitchens. I was just brilliant at producing that burst of energy. It\u2019s probably not very good for you, but I can\u2019t do any of that now.\u201d<\/p>\n When Kennedy started writing, did that replicate the buzz? \u201cNo. I think that was a different thing, probably the complete opposite. I\u2019m probably using a different part of my brain, mucking about with language.\u201d<\/p>\n Kennedy has a dry, deadpan wit and a refreshing frankness, so it\u2019s no surprise to learn that when, at a dinner party, she found herself sitting beside Gillian Anderson, who told her how much she liked the mother in Trespasses, the writer asked if she\u2019d play the role. <\/p>\n \u201cI was full of wine,\u201d Kennedy says, but also serious illness is a good antidote to razzmatazz. \u201cI think maybe I was very lucky in that I was either doing things like that or I was in Galway on a public oncology ward. Because there were two very extreme things going on, I didn\u2019t really think a lot about it. Maybe also I\u2019m a bit too old to be really impressed by that stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n Until her friend Niamh Mac Cabe, author of the recent short-story collection Four Night Seas, dragged her to a creative-writing workshop run by the Irish-American author Una Mannion in 2014, Kennedy had no notion of becoming a writer, despite having worked in bookshops in Naas and Dublin and then as a librarian after she was burned out as a chef. Except, as is so often the case, a good teacher had planted a seed that lay dormant for decades.<\/p>\n \u201cMiss McKenna used to do really amazing things. No child had a lot of cultural capital in this wee Catholic primary school in Holywood. One day she played a Mozart horn concerto and got us to write something. Another time she pinned Monet\u2019s poppies to the blackboard and she was wildly encouraging. <\/p>\n \u201cYears later she told me I had written something that was lovely. I remember thinking, maybe really briefly, God, I\u2019d love to be a writer. I probably thought it was like something magical. Must be f**king mental, actually, is what I think now.\u201d<\/p>\n Kennedy did a PhD in creative writing at Queen\u2019s University Belfast, which included a dissertation on the writer Norah Hoult, whom she had discovered in Sin\u00e9ad Gleeson\u2019s anthology The Long Gaze Back. She singles out two books as \u201creally extraordinary\u201d: Hoult\u2019s debut short-story collection, Poor Women, and There Were No Windows, a novel set in London during the Blitz. <\/p>\n [\u00a0Why has Norah Hoult been overlooked?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n She had a lonely life, Kennedy says. \u201cI cried a lot going through her archive,\u201d the bulk of which was a 40-year correspondence with an English writer and literary editor. <\/p>\n \u201cThere was an identity thing as well, where she didn\u2019t feel that Irish and didn\u2019t feel very English either.\u201d <\/p>\n Did Kennedy identify with her? <\/p>\n \u201cOver time I did, because she was kind of on my shoulder to an extent when I was writing the short stories, some of which were part of my PhD.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite her stellar start as a short-story writer, Kennedy feels that form is behind her.<\/p>\n \u201cI find short stories so hard now. And nobody buys them. Who is going to give you a decent contract for short stories?\u201d <\/p>\n She is a bit behind schedule \u2013 \u201cLast year nearly killed me, trying to finish Stations\u201d \u2013 but is seven chapters into her next novel, \u201cset in a coastal place in the west in 1994, the summer of Riverdance and also the ceasefire. It\u2019s about a glamorous Irish-American couple landing into a village and the unsettling effect they have on the locals \u2013 and one woman in particular.<\/p>\n \u201cSomething started to happen with the short stories. Some shouldn\u2019t have been short stories \u2013 like definitely In Silhouette could have been a novel; there\u2019s enough in there. Certainly the last story in the collection, Garland Sunday. I wrote 60,000 words for it, not linear but still. It wasn\u2019t until I had written a novel that I thought that should have been a novel.\u201d<\/p>\n Belladonna was never going to be a novel \u2013 it\u2019s probably the shortest story in the collection \u2013 but she saw the potential to develop not the plot but its central character, R\u00f3is\u00edn.<\/p>\n I did a Q&A<\/a> with Kennedy when Trespasses was published, and I was struck by how steeped her answers were in the North for someone who had moved south in 1979. The public event that affected her most was that year\u2019s trial of the Shankill Butchers. The most beautiful book she owns is her grandfather\u2019s copy of Ernie O\u2019Malley\u2019s On Another Man\u2019s Wound. Her favourite fictional character is Joe Logan, in Jennifer Johnston\u2019s Shadows on Our Skin. The books that made her laugh were anything by Sam McAughtry, and the book that moved her to tears was Bear in Mind These Dead, by Susan McKay<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"Louise](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/RGSGJJW3EJGWBIXNKA3FI2CI5Q.jpg\")
Louise Kennedy at home in Sligo. Photograph: Dara Mac D\u00f3naill <\/p>\n![\"Louise](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/AKG7BG65IVFSNBLBB6WH23CBY4.jpg\")
Louise Kennedy at home in Sligo. Photograph: Dara Mac D\u00f3naill\/The Irish Times <\/p>\n![\"Trespasses:](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/FSDA6AHDSUTSN46VL5KYRWF7HM.jpg\")
Trespasses: Gillian Anderson with Lola Petticrew and Martin McCann in the TV adaptation. Photograph: Peter Marley\/Channel 4 <\/p>\n