WIPs and New Releases
1) Tell us about
your new release…
Ø What is the
story about?
·
The book is called, “The Whole of the Moon”
by Kevin McManus. The events in the novel take place in western
Ireland during the winter of 1988-1989.
The setting is the fictional town of Ballinastrad and its rural
hinterland in County Sligo.
·
The main character is
Conor Doyle, a 27 year old man who has returned from working in London for the
Christmas holiday. He is reunited with
two of his close friends: Darragh Lonigan and Sarah Gallagher.
·
The story revolves
around the brutal hit and run – and subsequent death of – a well-liked man,
called Tom Kearns, from the area during the days leading up to Christmas.
·
Conor dreams of finding
a reason to stay in Ballinastrad.
However, the dream is shattered and a nightmare begins when he gets
entangled in the murder investigation that follows on from the aforementioned
hit and run. At the heart of the story
is the relationship between Conor and his life-long friend, Darragh. The two lads remained very close from
boys-to-men despite their very different backgrounds. Darragh being from a privileged family, the
son of a politician, and Conor, the son of a farmer. The central themes of the novel are jealousy
and betrayal.
·
The story is set
against the popular culture of the time, with many references to music of the decade,
including the book title itself, of course (which was inspired by the classic Waterboys’ song).
Ø Who is the main
character?
·
Conor Doyle, a 27 year
old Irish man
2) What inspired
this tale?
Ø How did the
story come to you?
·
I started writing the
background of the story about four years ago.
The story is inspired by my own experiences growing up in rural Ireland
in the 1980s. It is also shaped by some
of the friends and personalities I encountered during my student days.
·
I enjoyed creating and
mapping out the places in the story, the fictional villages and surrounding
hinterland, and creating the characters that would dwell there.
·
At first, I wasn’t sure
where it was going length-wise; possibly a long short-story, if that makes
sense? As I began to actually put the
story down on empty pages, I would constantly take breaks from it, and think up
new ideas for the plot, and come back to it – often months later, during school
holidays. I was constantly thinking
about the characters and their story.
Inspiration could come from anywhere – a song lyric, an overheard
conversation. It was during the autumn
of 2014 that I tried to dedicate myself to finishing the story of Conor and
Darragh (the two principal characters in “The Whole of the Moon”) because I had left them handing in
the dark for too long, and over the following nine months, I finally completed
the manuscript after several redrafts.
Ø Did you have to
research for this novel and if so, why?
·
As I mentioned earlier,
much of the story is based on past experiences growing up in rural Ireland
Ø If you did
research, what do you think surprised you most to learn and why?
·
You kind of forget
simple things about the late 80s – the fact that people had no mobile phones,
so if a character wanted to contact somebody, they had to use a payphone or
arrange a time to meet.
·
You also forget how
people in rural Ireland drank so much back then. The pub was the centre of the
community.
3) Do you relate
to your character?
Ø Is your
protagonist anything like you personally?
·
Yes, I think that Conor
Doyle is modeled loosely on my own character. Conor is the quiet one, the
observer, never the centre of attention. He is contrasted with his friend
Darragh, who is loud and confident.
·
Darragh was based on a
number of friends I had growing up and people I met during my college days.
Ø What made you
write this character; what made them important to you or made you want to tell
their story?
·
Well the old saying is
“write about what you know”. I just wanted to recapture some of the experiences
I had growing up. Obviously, a major crime takes place in my novel, and
fortunately, I was never affected by anything of that nature.
·
But my novel is not
really a crime novel at all. It’s more of a story about relationships between
old friends, and how those relationships become tested and strained by a
terrible event.
4) Is there
anything you specific want readers to know about this piece of work?
Well, just to say
that my novel contains a good deal of humour despite the serious subject matter
involved, and that it is an easy read, something you could get through in one
sitting on a wet Saturday afternoon with a good fire.
It will pull you
back to the late 80s, which were hard times growing up with high levels of unemployment and emigration,
but also, it was a time when Ireland was coming on age and taking its place on
the world stage with the success of the Irish
soccer team and the rise of U2 as a rock super
group. It was a time of awakening for Irish people, when we began to
stand up and question the institutions that had kept us so tethered for so
long.
5) When will the
novel be available for purchase?
It is available
now. It was published by Creativia last
month.
Ø If yes, do you
have a link available for buying it?
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