Elaine Feeney: ‘Every so often, I read something that changes my understanding of the world or myself'
The books on your bedside table? I have an ever-growing stack giving me the evils. At the top is The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine, which I'm eagerly anticipating – Erskine's ability to craft empathetic stories about ordinary lives is something I admire. Anna Carey's Our Song is next. I love Carey's YA writing, and am very excited to read it – I have heard from trusted friends that it's brilliant. I'm looking forward to Slanting Towards the Sea by Lidija Hilje, Caroline West's Wrong Women, David Szalay's Flesh and Sunbirth by An Yu. Roll on summer holidays!
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RTÉ News
09-06-2025
- RTÉ News
Book Of The Week: Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way by Elaine Feeney
Elaine Feeney's new novel is a masterclass in Irish storytelling, combining good elements from canonical classics like Anne Enright's The Gathering and John McGahern's That They May Face the Rising Sun with her own intuitive sensibility about the contemporary west of Ireland to deliver a novel which manages to eschew cliché. Yes, there is the familiar 'return of the native' narrative. Yes, there is bereavement, heartbreak and solitude; so much that, at times, protagonist Claire O'Connor's reckoning with her difficult past threatens to tip into sentimentality. But it never does. Feeney leaves enough of Claire's foibles intact - her self-righteousness, her latent gifted school-child predilection for quoting Yeats and Lady Gregory - that we end up encountering a breakdown which feels terrifyingly close to the real thing. Listen: Oliver Callan talks to Elaine Feeney about her new novel Claire is a forty-something writer and lecturer, who has been forced by grief to return from London to the farm she grew up on near Athenry, Co. Galway. Her mother is dead and her relationship with long term English boyfriend Tom is on the rocks. After its initial collapse when she storms out of their shared flat, seemingly for good, she learns that Tom has followed her to a nearby cottage in the west of Ireland; one which has been gifted to him rent-free by a wealthy female patron. "I imagined the kind of woman who… was bright, and perhaps she was scrawny with a thigh gap, smart shoes, minimal jewelry - and before sleep, I wondered, did he f**k her or just pretend to want to?" What makes Feeney's characterisation so refreshing is that she doesn't expect her reader to like - much less root for - her protagonist Differences in grief are rendered sharply from person to person and region to region. In sister-in-law Lara, we have the sophisticated Dubliner's impatient need for closure. In Tom, we have the stiff upper lip English need to endure and keep up appearances. In Claire, Brian and Conor, we have the raw thing - the highs and lows, the jagged rocks, itchy scrub and salty air of emotions so unrefined they could have come out of the land itself - until we're left with nothing less than the near-disintegration of a whole family. Remembering that Tom begins the novel as Claire's long-term boyfriend, his initial detachment from the catastrophe of her mother's death is heightened by the fact that he delivers his condolences by phone call. "Look, I am sure this can't be easy on you," he says. "I can't imagine - Oh sugar, Claire, I am - I'm sorry but I have to run, I'm launching Steve's book in five and they're calling me… Such bad timing." Listen: RTÉ Arena reviews Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way It should come as no surprise that Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way is replete with badly-behaved men. Claire's violently abusive father hangs like a dark cloud over much of the narrative, while her younger brother Brian detaches himself emotionally. Her older brother Conor prefers to abuse alcohol as a coping mechanism for loss, such that each sibling becomes illustrative of a different strand of changing aspirations for different Irish classes and generations. Where the ownership of land once represented security and fulfillment for small-holders like Claire's father and grandfather, for the university-educated siblings it is a 'noose' that fastens their ambition. There is even a shrewd reversal of the Mother Ireland trope, where Claire's father becomes so tied up in the land that it eventually leaves him embittered, angry, patriarchal and lonely. He debases his reputation by agreeing to sell a black mare to representatives of Queen Elizabeth II, and when that goes wrong, he unleashes a sustained physical assault on his wife; one we are given to understand is emblematic of the norm. Not that Claire isn't filled with faults of a different kind. What makes Feeney's characterisation so refreshing is that she doesn't expect her reader to like - much less root for - her protagonist; preferring instead to insinuate self-examination from her audience. Claire is so frequently high-minded in her wrongheadedness that all we can do is be compelled; watch as the car crash spins spectacularly over the road, feeling every nauseating turn as it rolls toward conclusion.
Irish Times
05-06-2025
- Irish Times
Let Me Go Mad In My Own Way by Elaine Feeney: An ambitious, thoughtful, nicely layered book
Let Me Go Mad In My Own Way Author : Elaine Feeney ISBN-13 : 978-1-787-30348-5 Publisher : Penguin Guideline Price : £14.99 Claire O'Connor is a poet and lecturer in creative writing. She lived in London for about a decade with Tom but soon after the death of her mother she left him and returned to 'the West of Ireland' – Athenry. She decides to stay in the family home, a bungalow built beside the original farmhouse, now derelict. The novel by Elaine Feeney focuses on Claire's relationship with her siblings, her dead parents, and with Tom, who reappears some years after the split. We delve into the past, both Claire's childhood and the earlier history of the family and region. A brutal encounter with the Black and Tans during the War of Independence is a key moment. The history of colonialism in Ireland, and the particular socio-economic culture of east Galway are dealt with. In the fields of Athenry, horses vault the class divide. Hunting 'was far from being a sport of kings around these parts'. 'The women with wizened faces and men with booming voices, their riding style slightly at odds with the locals' join the farmers for the hunt. The queen of England wants to buy a mare from the O'Connors! [ Elaine Feeney on her new novel: 'I was pushing a sort of Chekhov dinner party in the west of Ireland' Opens in new window ] The colonial legacy is one of the novel's thematic strands and is linked to the story of domestic intergenerational trauma. John, Claire's father, is capricious and violent. Her mother and the children live in terror. The unravelling of the mystery surrounding the mother's death is shockingly disclosed towards the close of the novel. READ MORE Gender issues are also dealt with at a local and universal level. Claire follows Insta posts by Kelly Purchase, one of those awful American 'tradwives'. She finds Kelly absurd but compelling. Ironically, by the end of the novel, she hosts a splendid party (Pinteresque, naturally), revealing that Kelly has exerted influence. 'The crab was set on a bed of baby gem lettuce, dressed with some hard shell, samphire, cracked black pepper and fresh parsley.' The novel is written in transparent, unshowy prose. Not linear, the narrative maintains its focus on Claire and despite several time-shifts never confuses. The main themes are handled with insight and real depth, and the depiction of the peculiarities of east Galway society is ethnographically interesting and convincing. An ambitious, thoughtful, nicely layered book. Éilís Ní Dhuibhne is a writer and critic. She is a member of Aosdána
Irish Independent
05-06-2025
- Irish Independent
Elaine Feeney delivers a moving meditation on enforced female roles in Irish society past and present
In retracing the trauma of multiple generations of a Galwegian family, the writer delivers a strong story that packs an emotional punch On top of being a playwright and a Booker-longlisted novelist for 2024's beloved How to Build a Boat, Galwegian Elaine Feeney is also a well-respected poet and so is likely familiar with Philip Larkin's 1971 mini masterpiece This Be The Verse. Even those who are a stranger to his work have probably heard Larkin's assertion that your mum and dad mess you up, although the Bard of Hull used an expletive to better get his point across. Don't blame your parents though, said Larkin, because they were 'messed' up by those who came before them. 'Man hands on misery to man' so get out while you can and don't look back. It's advice that Feeney's main character Claire O'Connor would have been wise to heed.
