Latest news with #BrianMcGilloway
Irish Times
10-05-2025
- Irish Times
Northern thriller writer Brian McGilloway: ‘People are having to take sides again. And that's never good here'
The bar at the Clayton Hotel in Belfast is an apt enough place to discuss author Brian McGilloway's latest thriller given its central character works in a pub. McGilloway drinks tea and chats about his drive from Strabane, where he lives with his wife, Tanya, and family, before discussion turns to the genesis of his new novel, The One You Least Suspect. Set in Derry, it centres on beleaguered Katie Hamill, a mother of one who is put in an impossible situation when two police officers try to force her to inform on her employers. It explores, among other things, how people justify wrongdoing ostensibly for the good of others. 'I started with the idea of this person who is put under pressure to become an informant, and wanted to play with the ideas that these two sides are both very certain of their rightness, and yet both of them are almost as bad as one another,' he says. 'It's that idea of, through no fault of your own, getting caught in something that is just impinging on your family, and that no matter what way you look, there doesn't seem to be any way out. Everything that you do to try to escape ends up actually making the trap that bit tighter.' READ MORE Katie's story unfolds in first person, chronologically, and with a tension and urgency that makes the book difficult to set down. She is in a nightmare not of her own making, with drugs and prostitution on one side and ruthless police on the other. Yet she's more clever than she first appears, and resourceful and courageous in the midst of unbearable pressures. The sensation of a shutting trap is palpable. Katie is squeezed between the O'Reilly brothers and detectives 'English' and 'Black Hair', and there are lots of parallels in both parties' actions; something one side does, the other side echoes later on. 'And they both kind of justify it on the grounds that, 'Oh, we're doing this for your protection', or 'We're doing this for the good of the community',' says McGilloway. The 51-year-old sees a reflection of this attitude in society's polarisation. Growing up in Derry there was 'very much that sense of sides' that seemed to ease after the Belfast Agreement, but has now returned. 'I think there's probably different reasons for it. I think social media has had a big part to play in it. I think Brexit, whether we like it or not, has a big part to play in that idea of having to take sides again. And the 'what side are you on?' – that's never good here.' Certainty in itself is polarising, he says. 'I find that always quite worrying whenever people are certain that they're right, because nobody's 100 per cent right.' [ Walking the tightrope: Brexit, books and the Border Opens in new window ] Another worrying development, for authors at any rate, is Meta's scraping of novels and papers without permission to train its artificial intelligence model, Llama. The technology company accessed the material from pirate database LibGen. When he checked the database, via an online search engine from US magazine the Atlantic, McGilloway discovered 28 of his books, including translations, had been included. 'I think some people have got to the point of forgetting that just because you can, doesn't mean you should,' he says. 'AI obviously is going to have its values and its place, but ... literature is an expression of our humanity, it's telling our shared story, that's the point of it, it's working out who we are and what our place is.' The idea technology might mimic that is 'terrible'. 'What's it going to say about our humanity? Because the thing producing it isn't human. Its intelligence is ultimately synthetic.' Added to this, he says, Meta's use of pirated books shows a lack of respect for the work of writers. 'They kind of go, 'Not only are we going to use this to train, but we're not even going to acknowledge or pay for it', and it's not even the paying for it. I think it's indicative of an attitude that devalues our humanity ... We're not heading in a particularly positive direction as a society.' I wanted to write a book that was made up of the documents of a police file, where the reader would have to basically solve the crime from the evidence The One You Least Suspect is his 13th novel since 2007 when debut Borderlands, the first in a series, was published. It featured Inspector Ben Devlin, whose voice, he says, is closest to his own. Detective sergeant Lucy Black is the central character in four novels, and he's written two other standalones, The Last Crossing and The Empty Room. McGilloway, who studied English at Queen's University Belfast after a brief, uninspiring taste of biological science, has had multiple best-sellers, awards and nominations. He also writes TV scripts, including for BBC drama Hope Street. It's unsurprising he's expanded to screenwriting given a childhood of watching crime drama. Morse, A Touch of Frost and other ITV productions featured strongly since they had the most reliable subtitles, necessary for his father, who had lost his hearing. McGilloway credits the dramas with his love for police procedural, but says after his father died in 2019, his writing changed. He's 'a different person' since then and is 'writing differently'. 'The books since he died, they probably have more emotional heft to them,' he says. He hasn't written procedurals since, beyond Blood Ties, another in the Devlin series, in which a father-son relationship is tenderly depicted. 'And Blood Ties was because I wanted everybody to know about my dad, who was really quiet and very honest, unassuming and just such a lovely, gentle spirit ... Not enough people knew what a good man he was.' His procedurals were 'all about control'. 'They're all about protecting your family. These later books have been more about that awareness of loss and letting go.' [ Only after my father's death did I begin to know grief Opens in new window ] McGilloway wrote a moving piece for The Irish Times after his father's death, and an essay for Impermanence, a collection edited by Neil Hegarty and Nora Hickey M'Sichili. 'It was that kind of idea that the last lesson your parents teach you is how to let them go, and the awareness that you'll have to do the same at some stage [for your children],' he says. His father also encouraged him to pursue a doctorate and, after he died, McGilloway took 'a couple of years out' from teaching to do that. His thesis scrutinises the history and revival of epistolary crime fiction – books written in the form of letters and documents – and looks at works including by Wilkie Collins and Dennis Wheatley. 'Where this came from was about 10 years ago, I said to my editor – my then editor with the publisher I was with – that I wanted to write a crime file ... a book that was made up of the documents of a police file, where the reader would have to basically solve the crime from the evidence.' The response was, 'No, no, nobody would want to read that. You need a central character, you need narrative.' The editor was probably right at the time, he says. Nevertheless, as part of his PhD he has finally created his own epistolary novel. 'An awful lot of it was about generating photographs and trying to create a look of a webpage or the BBC News site or whatever else. So it was very much a construction exercise,' he says. 'It's been a privilege to do ... to have the time to work on a book, just not because you're wanting to get it published, just because you want to do it.' He has always written and produces work in short, intense bursts. 'It feels like a compulsion,' he says. 'If you don't write for a while, it just builds and builds until you have to.' His wife tells him, 'Go and do some writing because you're unbearable', he says, laughing. He doesn't begin a book from a point of having something to say. It starts with a 'kind of discomfort'. He mentions Blood Ties again and its examination of a hierarchy of victimhood. 'There was an awful lot of talk in the press here about victims and who's a worthy victim and who's not a worthy victim. And I kind of remember listening to it going, 'Is there something uncomfortable about this?' Because every one of those people was a person and every one of them is a family and their loss is no different,' he says. He thinks for a moment. 'I write to work out how I feel,' he says. The One You Least Suspect by Brian McGilloway, published by Constable, is out now
Irish Times
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Gustav Parker Hibbett wins John Pollard Prize
In The Irish Times this Saturday, Brian McGilloway tells Fiona Gartland about his new novel, The One You Least Suspect. Mary Ann Kenny tells Deirdre Falvey about her book, The Episode: : A True Story of Loss, Madness and Healing. And there is a Q&A with Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin about her debut novel, Ordinary Saints. Reviews are Paschal Donohoe on How Feminist Economics Can Change the World by Emma Holten; Making Sense of Chaos by J Doyne Farmer; and Why We're Getting Poorer by Cahal Moran; Malachy Clerkin on The Last Ditch by Eamonn Sweeney; James Hanrahan on Abortion: A History by Mary Fissell; Claire Hennessy on the best new YA fiction; Conor O'Clery on The Folly of Realism: How the West Deceived Itself About Russia and Betrayed Ukraine by Alexander Vindman; Adam Wyeth on Writers Anonymous by William Wall; Huda Awan on Paradise Logic by Sophie Kemp; Naoise Dolan on Gunk by Saba Sams; Henrietta McKervey on The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon; Andrew Roycroft on Dazzling Darkness: The Lives and Afterlives of the Christian Mystics & The Magic Theatre by James Harpur; Paul Clements on local history books; and Michael Cronin on Ghost Wedding by David Park. This weekend's Irish Times Eason offer is Guilty by Definition by Susie Dent, just €5.99, a €6 saving. Eason offer Gustav Parker Hibbett has received the 2025 John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize for their debut poetry collection, High Jump as Icarus Story (Banshee Press) at an award ceremony in Trinity College Dublin this evening, Thursday, May 8th. READ MORE This is the seventh year of the prize, which is awarded annually for an outstanding debut collection of poetry in the English language. Valued at €10,000, the prize is sponsored by the John Pollard Foundation and administered by the Trinity Oscar Wilde Centre in the School of English at Trinity. Parker Hibbett is a poet and essayist. Raised in New Mexico, USA, they are currently based in Dublin where they are the 2025 Commissioned Writer for Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. They are also pursuing a PhD in Literary Practice at Trinity College Dublin. Parker Hibbett said: 'Since publishing High Jump as Icarus Story, there have been so many small ways, almost daily, that I've been disarmed or humbled or bowled over by other people's care and generosity, by the time so many people have taken simply to sit with my writing. With this award, I'm bowled over in a really big way. 'This year's other shortlisted collections, which create the context of what this award means, all share what is one of my favourite qualities in poetry: the ambition and ability to expand the boundaries of what language can do, what it can hold and remake and conjure. It has been an honour to be here next to them, just as it is a honour now to see my collection next to the impressive lineage of winning collections. I'm very aware that we can choose how we engage with art—what we bring with us when we meet it, how willing we are to take it on its own terms—and that each kindness my book receives is a choice. 'The whole team at Banshee—in particular Jessica Traynor, Eimear Ryan and Laura Cassidy—were the first to meet this book with kindness. They received it with exceptional care, and they joined, with enthusiasm, in the project of helping it grow. The support of my friends and family, particularly my partner Abbie, has been another great kindness that I wouldn't be able to write without. Thank you, of course, massively, to the judging panel—Eoin McNamee, Una Mannion and Tom Walker—for coming to my book with such generosity, and thank you as well to Stephen Vernon, Provost Linda Doyle, and Trinity College Dublin at large for your belief and investment in poetry. What an incredible honour this is. I am endlessly grateful.' Previous winners are Patrick James Errington, Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Gail McConnell, Diane Louie, Isabel Galleymore, and Hannah Sullivan. Prof Eoin McNamee, director of the Trinity Oscar Wilde Centre, said: 'Gustav Parker Hibbett's debut is a collection of remarkable range and in their own words, unlikely magic, the poet as Icarus falling through selves or rising up to meet them. At once exalted and humble this is work of the highest order.' High Jump as Icarus Story was also shortlisted for the 2024 TS Eliot Prize and the 2025 Farmgate Café National Poetry Award. The five shortlisted titles for the 2025 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award, announced by Listowel Writers' Week. The winner of the €20,000 prize will be revealed at the festival's opening night on May 28th. Photo: Dominic Walsh. Colm Tóibín, Joseph O'Connor, Donal Ryan, Niall Williams, and Christine Dwyer Hickey have been shortlisted for the 2025 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award, unveiled today by Listowel Writers' Week. The winner will be announced at the festival's opening night on 28th May. Sponsored by Kerry Group, the award carries a total prize fund of €22,000, with €20,000 awarded to the winner and €500 for each shortlisted author. 'Kerry Group's 31-year partnership with Listowel Writers' Week stands as a testament to our enduring belief in the power of storytelling to inspire and connect,' Catherine Keogh, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, Kerry Group, said. 'Each year, the calibre of literary talent and vision among the shortlisted writers astounds us, and this year is no exception. We extend our congratulations to all of this year's nominees and eagerly await the announcement of the winning work later this month.' This year's adjudicators, authors Carol Drinkwater and Paul McVeigh, reviewed 48 submitted novels and carefully selected five outstanding titles that reflect the strength, imagination, and storytelling brilliance of contemporary Irish fiction. The shortlisted titles are: Our London Lives by Christine Dwyer Hickey; The Ghosts of Rome by Joseph O'Connor; L ong Island by Colm Tóibín; Time of the Child by Niall Williams; and Heart, Be At Peace by Donal Ryan. Ned O'Sullivan, chairperson of the Board of Listowel Writers' Week, said, 'The Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award is a valued part of our festival's celebration of Irish writing. We are sincerely thankful to Kerry Group for their continued and generous support. Congratulations to the five shortlisted authors, your novels reflect the richness and diversity of contemporary Irish fiction, and we're proud to honour your work here in Listowel.' * What is Wild? a talk by Mark Cocker, award-winning author of creative non-fiction, naturalist, columnist and broadcaster will take place in St Patrick's Church, Curtlestown, Enniskerry, Co Wicklow at 5.30pm on Saturday, May 17th as part of the Dawn 'til Dusk events in the Shaking Bog festival. Also concert & readings featuring poet, Jane Robinson, violinist, Lynda O'Connor and cellist/composer, Ailbhe McDonagh at 7.30pm on Saturday, May 17th in the same venue. * Olga Dermott-Bond has won the Strokestown International Poetry Competition 2025 as part of this year's Strokestown International Poetry Festival for her poem René Laennec Remembers the day he dreamt a stethoscope. Judge Jane Clarke said: 'The winning poem is a sparkling tribute to the French physician and musician René Laennec who invented the stethoscope. Through gorgeous imagery, rhyme and rhythm the poem conveys the compassion, empathy and commitment that inspired his discovery. The metaphor of the patient's heart beat as 'distant muffled hooves' is surprising, yet perfect for this standout poem that pulses with life. 'Among the 700-plus entries, many poems stood out and warranted rereading. The five shortlisted poems shone in their exploration of relationships with both intimacy and restraint, bringing diverse people, times, and places to life through a deft use of language that evokes music and imagery.' Now in its 24th year, the winner receives €1,000 while the following four shortlisted poets receive €250: Paul McMahon; Winifred McNulty; Judy O'Kane; and Matthew Wimberley. * Considering the colossal shadow cast by Jonathan Swift over Irish literature for 300 years, it seems surprising how little he or his work have appeared in Irish theatre. WB Yeats brought Swift, and his long-time lady friend Stella, into his largely forgotten one-act play The Words Upon the Window-Pane. There has been little else of Swift before or since. That is, until Dublin writer Gerry Mullins wrote Jonathan Swift: Savage Indignation, and premiered it to a full house and a standing ovation at St Patrick's Cathedral last November. Adapting poems by Swift and Stella, and angry letters by Swift's other lady friend, Vanessa, Mullins has written a very entertaining musical about the tumultuous time in each of their lives when the two women found out about each other. Jonathan Swift: Savage Indignation plays next during the Swift and Vanessa Festival in Celbridge, Kildare, on May 31st ( ); and The Lark in Balbriggan, Dublin, on July 5th ( ).
