Introduction
I was eight years old when I wrote my first story, the tale of a family called the Smiths who travel to Perth on a train. After great deliberation, I called it ‘The Smith Family Goes to Perth on the Train’. Thirty-five years later, I’ve realised two things about my writing: one, I don’t need to sum up the entire plot in the title and, two, I’m still intrigued by the same themes – families and the journeys they take, physically and emotionally.
I’m sure I have my childhood to blame. I grew up as the middle child in a family of nine, in what I’d call a cauldron of words. Every day brought drama, laughter and entertainment, all the ingredients I now like to include in my writing.
The stories in this collection were written over the past ten years for magazines, anthologies and the, Books Alive reading campaign, and include two new stories written especially for this book. Gathering them together has been like looking back through a photo album. I can remember where I was when I wrote each one, what idea sparked the story, what was happening in my life, even where the names of characters came from.
A sighting of a girl in full Goth regalia walking beside a make-up-free girl led to ‘Hippy Hippy Shake’. I bought a box of second-hand books in a market one day and found an old book of household tips buried at the bottom. ‘Spellbound’ was written around that time. An article in a magazine about food trends sparked ‘Just Desserts’. I wrote ‘Sweet Charity’ because I had just finished my fourth novel, The Alphabet Sisters, and wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Lola, the fearless and fashion-challenged grandmother at the heart of the story.
Living in Dublin, I often see tour parties around the city. A group of young, happy travellers caught my eye one afternoon. At the back was an older, sadder woman, who seemed apart from the others. I couldn’t get her face out of my mind. ‘The Long Way Home’ was written for her.
‘The Role Model’ was sparked by friends joining a weightloss group and changing, physically and emotionally, before my eyes. Wedding Fever’ came from a neighbour guiltily telling me she’d hired a cleaning lady and had been up all night scrubbing the house before her arrival.
I wrote my novella Odd One Out after seeing a magazine story about a family of artists and painters, illustrated with a glamorous photo of the parents and three beautiful daughters around a table. The caption mentioned casually that there was a fourth daughter who wasn’t pictured. The story of Sylvie, the ‘invisible’ daughter, started to take shape that same day.
Although each of these stories is very different, they all touch on subjects close to my heart: family, friendship, love, travel and adventure. It’s the everyday dilemmas of life that intrigue me, the choices we all face, the mistakes we make, our yearning for happiness and understanding.
I’m delighted to bring my stories between two covers for the first time and I hope you enjoy them all.
Warmest wishes and happy reading.
Monica McInerney
Dublin
