An almost unknown Dublin writer has been paid what may be the highest advance yet for an Irish novel.
The London publisher, Simon and Schuster, has signed a deal with Jamie O'Neill for £250,000 sterling for his novel At Swim Two Boys. The 300,000-word epic is a love story between two boys, set against the background of the 1916 Rising.
O'Neill, who now lives in London, spent 10 years writing the novel. He took his present job as a hospital night porter so that he could continue to work on the novel while at work. He couldn't even get his friends to read it. However, the Irish editor, David Marcus, read a story O'Neill had written and contacted him.
When O'Neill had finished his novel he put a copy of the manuscript in the post to Marcus and went on holiday. He returned to the news that Marcus had liked the book and had interested a literary agent, Giles Gordon. Within a week, O'Neill had signed a deal with Simon and Schuster.
The 39-year-old writer says that when he heard the news he "went from shock to worry without any happiness in between". He hadn't even known anyone was reading the novel, and the sum mentioned was so large he had to write it down to take it in.
Like many Irish people of his generation, he ended up in England without having made a decision to emigrate.
"The thing about selling the book is, I can come back. I've always wanted to. The sort of money they're mentioning seems to indicate I needn't work at anything else for a while, but I'm quite convinced the company will go bankrupt or something." In fact, O'Neill is likely to sign a lucrative American deal.
He grew up in Cabinteely, Co Dublin, and went to school in Presentation College, Glasthule. The landscape of his youth informs the book. "It's about two boys who meet at the Forty Foot in Sandycove and plan to swim to the mudlands, an island off Dalkey Island. They plan to train to swim there on Easter 1916," he recounts.
With their swim the boys are, says O'Neill, "declaring their own independence. They discover their own nationalism in each other." This is contrasted with the patriotic nationalism of the 1916 Rising, and Padraig Pearse makes an appearance in the book. As much as anything else, says O'Neill, he is trying to imagine what it was like to be gay in 1916.