We sat down with award-winning Irish author Henrietta McKervey to take a look through her bookshelves.
What’s the life of an author like?
I feel very lucky that this is my job. Hours are long, pay is small, but I really enjoy it. I also get to work from home, which was a big plus when my children were younger.
Where do you get your ideas?
All sorts of places. Newspapers, old movies, curious stories I overhear… I keep a file – hard copy and on my computer – of anything that strikes me as interesting. You never know when a couple of tangents will come together and begin to shape a plot.
What is your writing process like?
I keep showing up at my computer. The quote ‘the art of writing is the art of applying the seat of one’s pants to the seat of one’s chair’ has been attributed to many people (I heard it linked with Kingsley Amis). I don’t know who said it first, but they were right.
What is the first book that made you cry?
Thinking back, I reckon it was Flambards, K.M. Peyton’s brilliant trilogy. Set in Edwardian Britain, it opens with orphan Christina Parsons moving to a country house in Essex to live with her fox-hunting uncle and his two sons.
What did you do with your first advance?
With every advance I have bought a picture or print so that every time I see it I can remember the excitement. My first advance went to a print by Joy Gerrard, a friend and very talented artist.
How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have?
Two unpublished, one from 2013 and one from 2023. Half-finished would be the one I’m writing now.
What is your favourite childhood book?
Flambards is up there for sure. I also loved Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Ian Serraillier’s The Silver Sword and Joan Lingard’s Kevin and Sadie series.
What are you reading at the moment?
I’ve just finished Edel Coffey’s In Glass Houses. What a twist!
What book should be on everybody’s shelf?
A dictionary.
Which authors do you admire?
It’s a long list, but the contemporary authors up top include Joseph O’Connor, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Lorrie Moore, Sarah Waters and Kate Atkinson. I’ve always admired Agatha Christie for her remarkable plots and Jane Austen for her wit and sharp turn of phrase.
What was the last book that made you laugh?
Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis. Whip-smart debut from last year.
What books are on your bedside table?
J G Ballard’s Kingdom Come; Frances Wilson’s biography of Muriel Spark; Little Vanities by Sarah Gilmartin and Kathleen MacMahon’s Other People’s Lives – the latter two are out in May.
What’s next?
I’m halfway through a novel about the lives of women working in the film industry in the early fifties.
The Woman in the Water by Henrietta McKervey is out now