Car Tourismo Banner
Home » Regional » Shannon » RTÉ journalist publishes debut novel

RTÉ journalist publishes debut novel


SHANNON’S Rachael English has been on RTÉ Radio for more than 20 years and she has just published her first novel, Going Back.
It tells the story of Elizabeth Kelly and her young friends, who spend the summer of 1988 in Boston and then revisits them in an Ireland once again in deep recession.
Speaking about the plot to The Clare Champion this week, the Morning Ireland presenter said, “There’s a brief bit at the start in the present day but mainly the first half of the book is set in the summer of 1988. Then the second half of the book is set in the present day, between the end of 2010 and early 2012.
“The first half of the book is about one particular summer and the second half, more than 20 years later, catches up with the people whose stories were told in the first part of the book. Some of the consequences or decisions they made back in ’88 are starting to be felt many, many years later.”
She was in the States herself in the summer of ’88 and she is a similar age to the central character. “I’m just slightly younger than the characters in the book. I did spend that summer, ’88, in America but I wanted to make them just slightly older so they were at that place where they had to make their minds up about what they were going to do with their lives. They were 21, rather than 19 like we were when we went to America.”
After 25 years, there is some discontent among the characters about how things have gone. “The main character, Elizabeth Kelly, is probably pretty disillusioned with life. The others are a bit of a mixture. The first part starts on a day, which unbelievably is 25 years ago next month, when Ray Houghton scored against England. The second part starts on a rather less glorious day in Irish history, when a deal was done with the IMF.
“It’s in the snow and I suppose for people of my own generation, who grew up with the recession in the 1980s, to be plunged into all that again, it kind of led to some soul searching, so that’s where some of them are at.”
One of her characters comes from Shannon and she says he is the most wholesome one. “I joke that he’s the only 100% decent character in the book, he has hardly any side to him at all. His name is Aidan and he’s the boyfriend of Elizabeth’s daughter, Janie. I called him Aidan after Aidan Park because it used to be the first place you’d come to in Shannon.”
She admits to being “a demon” for writing essays when she was at secondary school in St Patrick’s Comprehensive but hadn’t been doing any creative writing before getting started on the novel.
“Various things happened; I think you get to a stage where you think this is for somebody else, for people who have qualifications in creative writing or whatever. I’d probably convinced myself it was something I couldn’t do.”
An encounter with one of her former teachers got her thinking about going back to fiction.
“One of the things that stuck in my mind and that gave me an impetus to writing was that a few years ago I met Vera Madden, who taught me English for five years in the Comp. She said she was very disappointed in me that I hadn’t written; that she always thought I would write. It was one of the things that stuck in the back of my head.”
When the idea for the novel came to her, she really got to work.
“I suppose I got an idea as much as anything and it was kind of niggling away at me. I thought I’d give it a go. I didn’t even know if there was a novel in that story but I thought I’d give it a go and see how I got on. About 18 months later, I found it was a novel.
“In fairness, there was a lot of work in the interim. No more than anybody else, I had to throw a lot of stuff out, start again and again and rewrite the rewrites. Eventually, I kind of got to a place where I was happy enough that I could show it to other people.”
Of course, her work on radio requires her to bring stories to people in a coherent manner and she felt the discipline from her job was helpful.
“As a journalist, you’re used to trying to put some sort of order on a story. The difference in this case is that the story is made up but it’s still something with a beginning, middle and end.
“Also, as a journalist, you’re used to just getting on with it. There’s not too much time or scope for sitting there, looking at the wall. You’re used to just getting stuck in, which with writing fiction seems to be a good thing. Even if it’s rubbish that you write the first time, you still have something to work on. If you write a thousand words and only a hundred of them are salvageable, it’s better than nothing.”
Working on Morning Ireland means getting up at 4.30am so getting up even earlier to write wasn’t really an option. Instead, she wrote after work and on days off.
She says she underestimated how much she would enjoy the writing and it was never too far from her thoughts.
“It might only have been 10 minutes in the day but I would have done something every day. When I had the time, be it a day off or at the weekend, I would have spent a lot of time at it. I would have written in two or three-hour blocks, taken a break from it and gone back again.
“Once I got into it, I was going around with notebooks and scraps of paper and sending myself text messages and even writing stuff on my hands when I’d come up with an idea, even if it was only a word or a phrase. Once you get into it, it takes over your life in a way,” she concluded.

About News Editor

Check Also

A fresh spin on local sport

WITH Spring in the air, the Ballycasey based Clare Cricket Club will be getting back …