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Now it's time for this week's Meet the Author. | 0:00:01 | 0:00:04 | |
The Irish writer Paula McGrath's novel, A History of Running Away, | 0:00:04 | 0:00:08 | |
is about three women separated by time and place, | 0:00:08 | 0:00:12 | |
who are all trying to escape the circumstances of their lives. | 0:00:12 | 0:00:17 | |
They're all connected, although we don't know how | 0:00:17 | 0:00:20 | |
at the start of the book, and their stories are about | 0:00:20 | 0:00:23 | |
a society that seems to thwart them at every turn, | 0:00:23 | 0:00:25 | |
but then perhaps begins to offer something different, | 0:00:25 | 0:00:27 | |
and something hopeful. | 0:00:27 | 0:00:31 | |
Welcome. | 0:00:31 | 0:00:41 | |
What fascinated you about these three women who are | 0:00:45 | 0:00:50 | |
apart but connected? | 0:00:50 | 0:00:53 | |
I began with Jasmine, who's our 1980s character | 0:00:53 | 0:00:58 | |
who decides that she wants to box. | 0:00:58 | 0:01:01 | |
Which wasn't allowed at that time for women. | 0:01:01 | 0:01:03 | |
That's right, yes, which I didn't realise initially. | 0:01:03 | 0:01:08 | |
I had an image of a character, which is unusual for me | 0:01:08 | 0:01:12 | |
because usually, I forget to write what they look like at all. | 0:01:12 | 0:01:15 | |
But this character was extremely vivid to me. | 0:01:15 | 0:01:17 | |
She had... | 0:01:17 | 0:01:22 | |
She was the 1980s rural only goth in the village, | 0:01:22 | 0:01:24 | |
so I knew my setting would be '80s, and I knew it was rural | 0:01:24 | 0:01:28 | |
Ireland to begin with. | 0:01:28 | 0:01:29 | |
She runs away from home because she wants to join | 0:01:29 | 0:01:31 | |
Legs Co initially, but the BBC gave her short shrift | 0:01:31 | 0:01:34 | |
and she ends up back in Dublin and discovers boxing. | 0:01:34 | 0:01:42 | |
At the time that I was starting to think about this | 0:01:42 | 0:01:44 | |
novel in the beginning, | 0:01:45 | 0:01:46 | |
I was fascinated by Katie Taylor, the Irish boxer. | 0:01:46 | 0:01:48 | |
She was fighting for Olympic gold, and there was something | 0:01:48 | 0:01:50 | |
about the fact that boxing had been illegal and now she was | 0:01:50 | 0:01:53 | |
winning a gold medal. | 0:01:53 | 0:01:54 | |
Did you have any feelings about women's boxing? | 0:01:54 | 0:01:56 | |
Not really, it wasn't something I wanted to do. | 0:01:56 | 0:02:00 | |
I had one attempt at kickboxing and fell out of the gym. | 0:02:00 | 0:02:07 | |
It was very strenuous, so I had no objection, but no | 0:02:07 | 0:02:10 | |
real interest myself. | 0:02:10 | 0:02:11 | |
So let's talk about the other two principal characters, | 0:02:11 | 0:02:13 | |
since we have started off with Jasmine. | 0:02:13 | 0:02:15 | |
Jasmine led me back to her mother's story, and through her to Ali, | 0:02:15 | 0:02:21 | |
who is a recently orphaned teenager who was running away | 0:02:21 | 0:02:26 | |
from her grandparents - grandparents that she didn't know | 0:02:26 | 0:02:29 | |
until recently that she has. | 0:02:29 | 0:02:31 | |
She's in Maryland in the States, and it's not | 0:02:31 | 0:02:34 | |
clear what the connection is between the characters | 0:02:34 | 0:02:36 | |
to the reader at this point. | 0:02:36 | 0:02:38 | |
The other narrator is a gynaecologist in present-day | 0:02:38 | 0:02:41 | |
Dublin, and she's increasingly frustrated with her | 0:02:41 | 0:02:43 | |
working conditions. | 0:02:43 | 0:02:46 | |
So they are all imprisoned in different ways? | 0:02:46 | 0:02:48 | |
Yes, you could say that. | 0:02:48 | 0:02:49 | |
They feel the need to run. | 0:02:49 | 0:02:54 | |
In any case, they all run, and in Jasmine's case | 0:02:54 | 0:02:56 | |
she runs away twice. | 0:02:56 | 0:02:59 | |
I suppose we have our fight or flight options, and they go | 0:02:59 | 0:03:02 | |
for flight each time. | 0:03:02 | 0:03:03 | |
The gynaecologist is on the brink, she is trying | 0:03:03 | 0:03:05 | |
to decide whether to stay. | 0:03:05 | 0:03:09 | |
They have all got great difficulties either because of intimate | 0:03:09 | 0:03:12 | |
relationships, work, family or by the social pressures | 0:03:12 | 0:03:14 | |
around them, and they seem to be trying to escape. | 0:03:14 | 0:03:16 | |
But there's a feeling in the book that things in that respect | 0:03:16 | 0:03:19 | |
may be getting better. | 0:03:19 | 0:03:20 | |
Is that how you feel? | 0:03:20 | 0:03:21 | |
I did feel that from looking at the boxing story, certainly, | 0:03:21 | 0:03:24 | |
things were getting better. | 0:03:24 | 0:03:27 | |
Obviously, Katie Taylor is a shining example | 0:03:27 | 0:03:28 | |
of why women should be allowed to decide whether or not | 0:03:28 | 0:03:31 | |
they want to box. | 0:03:31 | 0:03:34 | |
It's not for everybody, but there were and still are other | 0:03:34 | 0:03:37 | |
things that women can't do, that they're not allowed | 0:03:37 | 0:03:39 | |
to decide for themselves. | 0:03:39 | 0:03:43 | |
And I don't feel that that's getting better. | 0:03:43 | 0:03:45 | |
It needs to change, but there was an anger underlying | 0:03:45 | 0:03:47 | |
the writing of the book. | 0:03:48 | 0:03:56 | |
It was inescapable for me, and I think for many, | 0:03:56 | 0:04:00 | |
to think that you are living at home in Ireland in a society which has | 0:04:00 | 0:04:05 | |
changed radically, really, in the last, even the last decade. | 0:04:05 | 0:04:07 | |
The country has gone through an economic crash, | 0:04:07 | 0:04:09 | |
a recovery, and now seems to be booming again. | 0:04:09 | 0:04:11 | |
It has a sort of irrepressible self-confidence about it. | 0:04:11 | 0:04:13 | |
You've lived through a very dramatic period in the history | 0:04:13 | 0:04:16 | |
of Ireland, haven't you? | 0:04:16 | 0:04:24 | |
Yes, starting from the '80s, I came to Dublin to college | 0:04:24 | 0:04:28 | |
in the '80s and it feels to me that we have come, in a way, | 0:04:28 | 0:04:32 | |
almost a full circle, | 0:04:32 | 0:04:33 | |
a second recession. | 0:04:33 | 0:04:39 | |
Going back to the abortion referendum again, | 0:04:39 | 0:04:43 | |
it happened in the early '80s and yet we're back again | 0:04:43 | 0:04:46 | |
in 2014, 2016, 2017, and there's fresh new scandals. | 0:04:46 | 0:04:50 | |
So although Ireland has come a long way, | 0:04:50 | 0:04:52 | |
the hold of the Catholic Church has been broken to some extent, | 0:04:52 | 0:04:56 | |
I think the effects of that | 0:04:56 | 0:04:57 | |
have yet to be felt, for women at any rate. | 0:04:57 | 0:05:01 | |
For anybody who talks to people about these events, | 0:05:01 | 0:05:05 | |
you realise how profound the change has been, how profound | 0:05:05 | 0:05:10 | |
the questioning is of the kinds of assumptions there | 0:05:10 | 0:05:12 | |
were in the generation before yours. | 0:05:12 | 0:05:15 | |
I mean, the society is a much more mobile, open one than it's ever been | 0:05:15 | 0:05:19 | |
before in modern times. | 0:05:19 | 0:05:24 | |
Yes, and I tried with the book to show, and I think this is why | 0:05:24 | 0:05:27 | |
I ended up with three different narrators and brought them together, | 0:05:27 | 0:05:32 | |
just to show that the underlying theme that the Irish state's | 0:05:32 | 0:05:35 | |
relationship with women's bodies has been... | 0:05:35 | 0:05:38 | |
difficult, I suppose, | 0:05:38 | 0:05:43 | |
historically, and still is, but things have changed. | 0:05:43 | 0:05:50 | |
So back in the '50s, we had mother-baby homes, then we had this | 0:05:50 | 0:05:53 | |
abortion referendum, and now we have Katie Taylor winning | 0:05:53 | 0:05:55 | |
gold, but we still have to go to the next stage. | 0:05:55 | 0:05:58 | |
This is no coincidence that one of the main characters | 0:05:58 | 0:06:00 | |
is a gynaecologist. | 0:06:00 | 0:06:01 | |
No coincidence, no! | 0:06:01 | 0:06:02 | |
And her mother is a boxer. | 0:06:02 | 0:06:05 | |
Obviously, there's a mystery involved in the story, | 0:06:05 | 0:06:07 | |
a set of mysteries, but it's not a tease for the reader. | 0:06:07 | 0:06:13 | |
I mean, it's really a story that's meant to have you thinking | 0:06:13 | 0:06:18 | |
about their characters and their difficulties and how | 0:06:18 | 0:06:20 | |
they cope with them, isn't it? | 0:06:20 | 0:06:22 | |
That's really what drives you. | 0:06:22 | 0:06:23 | |
Yeah, it's the characters, each of them at their own stage, | 0:06:23 | 0:06:26 | |
trying to figure out where they are in their lives and what they want | 0:06:26 | 0:06:29 | |
and who they are in a way, as they also gradually come | 0:06:29 | 0:06:32 | |
to discover or the reader comes to discover who they are. | 0:06:32 | 0:06:35 | |
Irish writing is in such a healthy state - | 0:06:35 | 0:06:37 | |
there are young novelists, young poets, young storytellers | 0:06:37 | 0:06:39 | |
in Ireland which is, you know, is a small country. | 0:06:39 | 0:06:41 | |
The rich literary tradition really is still alive, isn't it? | 0:06:41 | 0:06:44 | |
Very much so. | 0:06:44 | 0:06:53 | |
Yeah. | 0:06:53 | 0:06:54 | |
Are you conscious of that? | 0:06:54 | 0:06:56 | |
I am conscious of it. | 0:06:56 | 0:06:57 | |
There's a lot of support out there. | 0:06:57 | 0:06:59 | |
Tax breaks and vibrant literary journals. | 0:06:59 | 0:07:00 | |
I think literature is something we take seriously. | 0:07:00 | 0:07:04 | |
I'm not too sure why, whether it's economic or whatever - | 0:07:04 | 0:07:07 | |
it's pretty cheap to sit down and write! | 0:07:07 | 0:07:12 | |
I think these tax breaks don't really cost the Government very | 0:07:12 | 0:07:15 | |
much, but they do kind of foster a community. | 0:07:15 | 0:07:18 | |
But when you say you don't know why, I think that if you talk to some | 0:07:18 | 0:07:22 | |
of the sort of world-renowned Irish writers of today, they all say, | 0:07:22 | 0:07:31 | |
look, you know, if you come from the small country that produced | 0:07:31 | 0:07:35 | |
Joyce and Beckett and Flann O'Brien, then you really are always conscious | 0:07:35 | 0:07:43 | |
that you have got kind of an obligation | 0:07:43 | 0:07:48 | |
to these great figures that | 0:07:48 | 0:07:49 | |
are standing on your shoulders. | 0:07:49 | 0:07:56 | |
Yeah, they are quite intimidating and for a long time I think... | 0:07:56 | 0:07:59 | |
I studied literature in college and that's probably why I found | 0:07:59 | 0:08:02 | |
it so difficult to get started as a writer... | 0:08:02 | 0:08:04 | |
Because you were aware of what's behind you! | 0:08:04 | 0:08:05 | |
Exactly, yeah. | 0:08:06 | 0:08:07 | |
Where do you think - this is your second novel, | 0:08:07 | 0:08:09 | |
Generation was the first couple of years ago - where | 0:08:09 | 0:08:11 | |
is your writing going to take you, do you think? | 0:08:11 | 0:08:14 | |
Well, I know where it's taking me at the moment. | 0:08:14 | 0:08:16 | |
I'm working on a third novel. | 0:08:16 | 0:08:18 | |
What kind of theme has that got? | 0:08:18 | 0:08:19 | |
The theme of trauma, if that doesn't sound too off-putting! | 0:08:19 | 0:08:22 | |
Oh, it's not off-putting. | 0:08:22 | 0:08:23 | |
Multiple trauma... | 0:08:23 | 0:08:24 | |
You can't have a novel where nothing happens, nothing exciting. | 0:08:24 | 0:08:28 | |
No, and I'm conscious of all of what might have become | 0:08:28 | 0:08:31 | |
cliches of Irish writing. | 0:08:31 | 0:08:35 | |
I don't want the child abuse story, I want multiple traumas that can be | 0:08:35 | 0:08:39 | |
read that are palatable to the reader, so that's | 0:08:39 | 0:08:41 | |
what I'm working on. | 0:08:41 | 0:08:42 | |
And avoiding the Irish cliche. | 0:08:42 | 0:08:43 | |
Trying hard! | 0:08:43 | 0:08:44 | |
Paula McGrath, thank you very much indeed. | 0:08:44 | 0:08:46 | |
Thank you. | 0:08:46 | 0:08:49 |