5 days ago
Northern Ireland's most exciting novelist – who's making her debut in her 50s
To her pupils, she is still Ms Erskine, head of English at a Belfast secondary school. But a mid-life foray into fiction writing now means Wendy Erskine has a second identity as one of Northern Ireland's hottest new authors.
So instead of discussing a Greek myth with a Key Stage 3 class or something by Tennessee Williams with her A Level students, Erskine, who is 57, is in London to discuss her own debut novel. The Benefactors is a polyphonic narrative about Belfast, class, parenting, and the aftermath of a sexual assault, served up with an undertow of politics.
'The Troubles is in the deep structure [of the book]. To me, it is in the deep structure of life in Northern Ireland,' she tells me, sipping a coffee in the basement cafe at The Ragged School, a Victorian free school set up by Dr Barnardo.
Her novel is the latest in a wave of cultural lodestones drawing attention to Northern Ireland. She reels off a list, which ranges from TV dramas such as Blue Lights and Derry Girls to the controversial rap trio Kneecap, notorious for their inflammatory political messages. Books such as Patrick Radden Keefe's Say Nothing, Anna Burns's Milkman and Michael Magee's Close to Home also come to mind.
'They have all been instrumental, one way or another, in developing a greater awareness of the place in all its strangeness and sadness and energy and beauty,' she says, the spit of 1970s-era Debbie Harry, with her blonde blunt fringe, her green short-sleeved sweater a perfect match with the cafe's artily peeling walls. This doesn't mean The Troubles are having a cultural moment, she adds. 'With respect, we're talking about 3,500 people having been killed.'
In her novel, 'the benefactors' of the title are a group of parents trying to atone for their sons' crimes. Benefactors is also the name of a sleazy website – also known as Bennyz – where men make payments, or 'beneficence', to women for talking dirty and more.
'This place, the Ragged School,' she says, pointing to the room we're in, 'is celebrating something good but I'm also looking at the more pejorative dimension of the benefactor. The idea that the benefactor is getting something out of [their charity]. That they're possibly on a bit of an ego trip.'
'Beneficence. Sounds so fancy,' thinks Misty Johnston, a central protagonist in the novel, whose Bennyz profile is based on the Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Johnston's Bennyz outfit is a white blouse with a lace collar and black satin ribbon bow to stand out from the booty-short-and-bra-top-wearing girls, although she draws the line at copying the Victorian poet's actual hairstyle – 'like she had just got a really good curly blow dry, except someone had flatted it on top… She's hoping to make at least a little bit of cash,' Erskine writes, her deadpan humour one of the book's many joys. (Her Instagram bio – 'lady writer not on the TV' – is a play on the Dire Straits song, Lady Writer. 'I was poking fun at my obscurity,' she says, smiling.)
Double-edged narratives are Erskine's forte, something she discovered by chance in 2015 after using her free Monday afternoons to take a six-month fiction workshop run by Dublin-based Stinging Fly magazine. She 'fell into short story writing' after Declan Meade, the Stinging Fly publisher, asked her to put together a collection. 'I was 49 and I knew this was a one-off opportunity. I tried to appear all dynamic and said, 'I could write you a story every six weeks.''
The upshot, Sweet Home, which was set in east Belfast and published in Ireland by Stinging Fly Press in 2018, was a searing success. A second, equally lauded, collection, Dance Move, followed in 2022. Short story writing hadn't appealed initially. 'You know how people talk about them, the silversmithing metaphors: every word in its place, burnished. I found that really off-putting.' But they were a 'pragmatic choice' because they didn't take long. 'It's a very democratic form. If you have stuff going on, there is a satisfaction in getting a short story completed. And I absolutely adored it. I realised how flexible they are.'
What they weren't was 'rookie prep' for a novel – at least not intentionally. What changed was wanting to stick with the same characters. 'I thought it would be gorgeous for me to get to reside in a world for longer than six or seven weeks,' she says. Her familiarity with the short story form also pushed her to try something different with her novel, which features cameos from 50 different voices reacting to the book's central drama, a sexual assault.
The floating first voice eases us into what happened. 'When I heard them talking the other week in the shop, about that girl Misty and those three rich guys, to be fair I didn't know what to think, I mean, Bennyz and all that, but when I checked her out online she was nowhere near as slutty looking as I thought she'd be.' A second fragmented voice describes the house where the assault occurs. 'The weeping cherry is, to my mind, the most elegant tree… There is one in the neighbouring front garden. Sad to say, in that house some boys are meant to have taken advantage of a young girl,' Erskine writes, before turning to one of the main characters, Frankie, who is stepmother to one of the 'rich guys' named by the first voice.
'I didn't want a novel I could tell as a short story. I wanted something energetic and complicated with a cacophony of voices,' she adds. 'It's arbitrary who writers choose to be their central characters. Often when I'm reading, there will be a scene between two characters in a cafe, and I'm wondering what the waiter is thinking or the person at the next table.'
It's an absorbing and clever structure that feels fresh and exciting, rather like Erskine, who makes me long to be re-taking A-level English provided I get her as my teacher. Have any of her students read her work? She laughs. 'I don't think I've ever had a conversation with any pupils about my writing. Worlds end up being compartmentalised.'
In a quirk of the Northern Irish exam system, which may help to account for their superior share of top grades compared with England and Wales, students can choose two of the novels they study for A-level English. 'They have to get approval from the exam board but I'd be delighted and thrilled if they wanted to read The Benefactors,' she says.
Erskine, who is married with two grown-up children, admits trying her hand once before at writing something long-form, when she was living in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, teaching English after studying at Glasgow University. 'But it was dreadful,' she says. Now, though, she seems to be on a roll – with two film scripts, more short stories and another novel on the go, there is plenty more Erskine to come.
She is sanguine about finding success in her 50s. 'This whole idea of the wunderkind thing, I love that, it's absolutely great. But I would query someone's judgement, to be honest, if they thought that the most exciting fiction was more likely to be written by someone under 35. Like, why? But neither do I think that older writers have universally achieved Zen wisdom. It just depends on the individual.'
She adds: 'I think things have changed. There is more of an understanding that literature, that art in general, isn't necessarily the province of the young. I'd get very excited if someone in their 60s had their first novel out. That's a wow. That's interesting. I don't think [my stories] are young people's stories.
'I don't think this novel is a young person's novel. At the same time, that's a very seductive narrative to tell yourself, that things could only have worked out the way they've worked out. But you can't go back.'
The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine (£18.99, Sceptre) is out on June 19
