Yes, the privilege and freedom of choice makes total sense – I hadn’t thought about it in that way! My next question touches on identity as – as you’re probably aware – some authors have been criticised for writing from a perspective that isn’t theirs, whether it’s a different racial, class or gender identity, so I wanted to ask how you went about writing a compassionate snapshot of a very specific experience?Įxactly – I didn’t want to make any sort of point and I didn’t want to be condescending or patronising in the way I portrayed this family. Also, it’s exploring the idea of whether we have free will in the choices we make, or do our circumstances and outside forces impact on that free will? So, if you look at Joe and where he’s coming from and the friendships he has, he doesn’t have that privilege of being able make a choice that he can then get out of again. I think the book looks a lot at choice, and the privilege of choice too – sometimes we take choice for granted. That’s really interesting because I don’t think I’ve really picked up on that before. Which I guess mirrors the human experience because, even if you find out somebody has a terminal diagnosis, there’s always a part of your brain thinking maybe it will be okay… My next question is about a quote I read about your book that describes it as being a book that explores ‘what is means to be male against the gritty backdrop of Dublin and what it means to be free,’ The first bit of that quote is self-explanatory, but I wondered if you could talk to me about that sense of what it means to be free? It’s funny though because people have said to me that even though they know he has died, they’re still hoping that he hasn’t! So instead of being a big ‘reveal’, you want readers to focus on the grief as it develops instead of constantly thinking, ‘will he die or will he be okay?’ It was always going to be that way and when the book sold, it was still that way and it was only when I was deep into the editing process that I thought, oh god, is there any tension here? Am I ruining the whole book for people if they know very early on? But when I thought it through, I realised it was going to be a completely different book if you find out later because the book is an exploration of love and grief, and I didn’t want it to be a cheap shot for the reader – I think it just wouldn’t be the book that I was trying to write if I didn’t write from the beginning about that he had died. So, from the very, very beginning, I wanted the reader to know very early on that Finn had died and you sort of twig it in the first couple of pages and then, as the book goes on, you know for definite that he has died. I hope you don’t mind me starting with this question because it sounds like a spoiler, but I promise our reader, it isn’t! I found it interesting that you decided to mention Finn’s death really early on in the book, so I wanted to ask how you came to that decision?
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