Irish author Cathy Kelly talks to Stephen Jewell about her new novel and the importance of multi-tasking.
According to Irish writer Cathy Kelly, women are good at multi-tasking. I am about to ask about her latest novel, Homecoming, when she is distracted by one of her new Jack Russell puppies soiling the living room carpet. But instead of putting the phone down, she soldiers on, mopping up the mess with a kitchen towel before ushering the unfortunate canine into the garden.
"The little scamp followed me into the house and has done wees out of excitement," laughs Kelly, who is based in County Wicklow. "It's on a lovely silk rug but it's better if dogs wee on the good rugs. It stops you worrying about it. It's like banging the door of a new car, it's best to get it over with."
Kelly can afford to feel relaxed. Since her debut, Woman To Woman, was published in 1997, she has sold more than two million novels in Britain alone. In 2005, her fifth book Always and Forever displaced The Da Vinci Code and Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince at the top of the British sales charts. Homecoming is her 12th novel and like the others it follows a familiar and comforting pattern.
"They're all very much about women and the strength we get from family and friendships," she says.
"The places I write about are very important and there's always a sense of community. What we love about a soap like Coronation Street is that it's about this amazing community that has endured, with this group of people who meet up in a shop or the pub. That's something that's missing from a lot of our lives, as we now lead very insular existences and don't know our neighbours.
"When my grandmother was alive, I used to spend holidays with her in this little village in the west of Ireland, where everyone knew everyone else. Maybe what I write about is a harking back to that."
Homecoming begins with Eleanor Levine, a 70-year-old celebrity therapist returning to live in Dublin after spending most of her life in the United States. She rents a flat in Golden Square, a homely Victorian enclave, which could be Kelly's answer to Weatherfield.
"I like putting that kind of thing in my books," she says. "I must be a failed psychoanalyst myself, I love analysing people. You get so much enjoyment from a book with all these different people and their problems. In fact, when I start a book I usually create too many characters and end up having to take some out."
Although its numerous inhabitants could surely inspire many new storylines, Kelly is reluctant to return to Golden Square. "When you write about somewhere, you can really picture it in your head. It sounds like a beautiful place and I'd really like to go there myself, have some tea in Titania's Tearooms and visit the gorgeous shops. But I've never gone back to a book to write a sequel. Once it's done, I always feel like I'm finished with it."
Central to the story is Eleanor's grandmother's old recipe book, which dates back to the 1920s. Kelly structures the novel around it, naming alternate chapters after different food types and opening them with an extract from the fictional text.
"It gave me the chance to write about stuff that my own grandmother told me," she explains. "After people are gone, you realise that you didn't ask them enough about the way things were in their day. I also wanted to look at how when things change, the more they stay the same. We still worry about similar things that they did in 1920s poverty-stricken Ireland, like family, love and the future. Material things are different now but what is in our hearts is often the same."
Kelly has been criticised for her weak male characters, although she hopes to remedy that with her next novel. "The book I've just started to write is about a strong man," she says. "But I get scared that I'm going to get it wrong. I feel that I know women but I'm not sure I know guys that well."
She is looking forward to visiting New Zealand this week, although this time she will not be in the country on such an auspicious occasion. "I was there last year on St Patrick's Day and everyone hilariously presumed that I would be into drinking Guinness," she laughs. "I did a radio show at 7.30am and the Guinness people had been around, so everyone was already drinking and going mad. When they found out they were talking to a real live Irish person, they thought I'd be doing the same thing. But I said, 'I've got a lot on today so I don't think I should be drinking at this time of the morning'. It was a great day."
