Her second, The Heart of Everything, the story of the estranged adult children forced back together when their mother mysteriously disappears, was published in March. Henrietta McKervey’s first novel What Becomes Of Us (Hachette Books Ireland, 2015) is the story of a young woman and her life-changing encounter with a former member of Cumann na mBan who for 50 years kept secret her involvement in the 1916 Rising. I remember the poem it’s based on – The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes – from school. If you have a child, what book did you most enjoy reading to them? That scene in A Handful of Dust when John Andrew dies and his mother Brenda is relieved that it’s not John Beaver! That and the very last scene, where we finally understand what is happening to Tony Last. What is the most moving book or passage you have read?

I didn’t know it was going to be that way until it was. The very last chapter of The Heart of Everything. What sentence or passage or book are you proudest of? He had been touting himself around London trying to extort money from alleged relatives by claiming to be the Irish son of a peer. If you were to write a historical novel, which event or figure would be your subject?Ī few years ago I came across a newspaper report from 1839 about a man who’d killed himself in a Lambeth shooting gallery. Jessica Mitford, Mary Shelley, PG Wodehouse, Seamus Heaney, Maeve Binchy, Eddie Braben (Morecambe & Wise writer). Which writers, living or dead, would you invite to your dream dinner party? You have to keep on putting one word in front of another. What lessons have you learned about life from reading? In Ireland, very voice-led fiction generally, and lots of great new writing by women. What writing trends have struck you lately? Where do you see the publishing industry going? Ntozake Shange, The Love Space Demands Michelene Wandor, A Question of Courage (radio play from the novel by Marjorie Darke) Timberlake Wertenbaker. I’ve bought (and not bought) books based on reviews, so I assume other people do too. Although I may or may not agree with the comments, I think they matter because people make decisions based on them. I’d love to say none but it would be a lie.

A Question of Courage by Marjorie Darke