Siobhan MacGowan: ‘History has always been for me the ultimate story’

Tell me about your new novel, The Graces

The novel is set in early 20th-century Ireland and tells the story of a young woman, Rosaleen Moore, who is “touched by the Graces” – a seer and a healer. Known as The Rose, sought after by fashionable society, the mighty of Dublin Castle and political agitators alike, her last extraordinary prophecy ensures her legend. But her deathbed revelation resurrects a tragedy, a crime to which the community’s once beloved, currently imprisoned abbot has confessed. But now doubt is cast on his word. The Rose has a different tale to tell.

Your 2022 debut novel, The Trial of Lotta Rae, is also set in the early 1900s but in London. What is the appeal of historical fiction and this period in particular?

History has always been for me the ultimate story. From childhood, like any story, I was hugely curious about what had happened, where and when, to bring us to the point we are now. The turn of the 20th century I find particularly poignant. A new century is a time of such great hope: liberal welfare reforms, scientific advances, the rise of women, the promise of a new generation, only to be vanquished by the greatest war the world had seen. And how the world changed utterly after it. As Robert Graves said: Goodbye to all that.

Your childhood literary idol was Charlotte Brontë. Why?

I felt attuned to her and the period, and loved her way with language. In her less celebrated work, Villette, she writes almost psychedelic passages that I call a carnival of the mind. They had an influence on me.

You grew up in an Irish family in England. Did the outsider’s outlook help make you a writer?

Possibly, but I was observing people and the world around me long before I had any notion of being an outsider. So I think it might have been something innate rather than environmental.

Your brother Shane MacGowan is one of Ireland’s finest lyricists. How would you describe his gift? Do you share a similar aesthetic?

Shane’s gift is innate but was possibly influenced by our parents. Our mother was magical and gifted and our father, although unpublished, a satirical poet and playwright. Shane and I definitely share an aesthetic. When younger we would mime song lyrics, punching out their emphasis to one another. Watching the film, The Dead, we recited in unison Joyce’s last paragraph, “Snow was general all over Ireland”, both in awe at its beauty.

You produced a Pogues fanzine and worked for Van Morrison and recorded an album of your own songs, Chariot, in 1998. Does music feed into your writing?

Possibly influences the rhythm and flow of the sentences. Gives me a sense of timing.

What projects are you working on?

My third novel, set within a disturbed community on an Irish island in the aftermath of the Civil War.

Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage?

Yes. Much to my husband’s chagrin, to the Brontë Parsonage on our honeymoon!

What is the best writing advice you have heard?

Probably advice useful for much in life. If something is problematic, leave it. Go for walk. Do something else. Clear your mind and the answer will come.

Who do you admire the most?

Since childhood, the civil rights activists of 1960s America. MLK obviously but all the many others that played their part. I made a pilgrimage to MLK’s Atlanta home and the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.

You are supreme ruler for a day. Which law do you pass or abolish?

Abolish the barbaric death penalty where it exists, but also establish that murder means lifetime incarceration and violent crime carries a policy of three strikes and you’re out.

What current book, film and podcast would you recommend?

Not au fait with current films/ podcasts but book I would recommend is my present read, The Red Bird Sings by Aoife Fitzpatrick. Beautifully written and compelling.

Which public event affected you most?

So many. The Moors Murders. The savage beheading of hostages by Isis. The seemingly Ku Klux Klan mentality of the US police. Fascism, racism and cruelty affect me.

The most remarkable place you have visited?

Hardly remarkable, but visiting California for the first time in my 20s, I had never seen such sunlight, flowers in vivid colours and could almost smell the desert in the air. This and the fact that it was a place of such great 1960s music and activism had a big effect on me.

Your most treasured possession?

A necklace my mother gave me before she died.

What is the most beautiful book that you own?

The illustrated Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

Which writers, living or dead, would you invite to your dream dinner party?

Charles Dickens, Emily, Charlotte and Anne Brontë, WB Yeats, Lady Gregory and Wordsworth, although I imagine Yeats and Wordsworth would jostle for attention!

The best and worst things about where you live?

Love the rural beauty and space. But no Marks & Spencer!

What is your favourite quotation?

You have taken the east from me; you have taken the west from me;

you have taken what is before me and what is behind me;

you have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me;

and my fear is great that you have taken God from me.

– Lady Gregory translation of Donal Og

Who is your favourite fictional character?

Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind: “Don’t bother me anymore, and don’t call me sugar.”

A book to make me laugh?

Heartburn by Nora Ephron. Hysterical, laugh-out-loud, satire on the breakdown of her marriage to Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein.

A book that might move me to tears?

Not the book but the inscription on the flyleaf of Hard Times by Charles Dickens. It said: “Hard Times – for these times.” There was something so immediate about it, brought it so close, it made me cry.

The Graces is published by Welbeck