Irish writer Liz Nugent talks Celtic Noir ahead of NZ festival

Irish writer Liz Nugent.

Ahead of her first visit to New Zealand, 2017 Irish Woman of the Year in Literature Liz Nugent talks to Craig Sisterson about dealing with dystonia and creating monstrous characters

Last November at a glittering night in Dublin celebrating the best of Irish storytelling – from poetry to cookbooks, literary novels to sports tales – it took Liz Nugent a little longer than most to reach the stage. And not just because she's popular with her writing peers as well as readers and received congratulations aplenty when Skin Deep was announced as the winner of both Crime Fiction Book of the Year, and the Listeners' Choice Award.

Each time Nugent rose from her seat and headed to the stage, her smile and her dress sparkled and her right leg dragged noticeably as she walked. As it had done when she'd won Irish Book Awards in 2014 and 2016 and when she was named Irish Women of the Year in Literature in 2017. For worse, rather than better, a kids' tricycle changed Nugent's life, more than 40 years ago.

Her limp, along with the fact she's a left-handed writer, is thanks to her brother's trike. But, in a way, so are the many awards filling Nugent's mantelpiece and her entire writing career.

"I have dystonia as a result of a childhood accident, when I was told not to slide down the banisters but did it anyway and landed headfirst on my brother's tricycle in the hall," explains Nugent as we chat after the Bute Noir festival.

"I had a brain haemorrhage and spent months in hospital. I mostly lost the use of my right arm and I still limp with my right leg. That all sounds terribly tragic but those endless days in hospital were where I discovered books. Like writing was my escape in later life, reading was my escape from pain and hospital food and multiple operations. If I hadn't been a reader, I would certainly never be a writer."

Moreover, Nugent says the exclusion she felt as a disabled child [dystonia causes a person's muscles to spasm uncontrollably and those can make the affected body part twist] made her an acute observer.

"Having a disability puts you at a remove from the rest of society ... I have no degree in psychology and yet my books examine all sides of human nature. I think if I'd always been one of the pack, I might not have seen all those traits that people think they're hiding."

In person, Nugent is a charming mix of blunt and funny. She'll talk about anything, is upfront with nary a hint of regret or self-pity. She's grateful that her fast rise as a thriller writer has come when she's middle-aged, rather than when she was younger and maybe wouldn't have coped. She's excited about travelling to New Zealand this month and exploring our country with her husband Richard as they drive from Auckland to Dunedin in between a handful of events.

"I've never been south of the equator, so I reckon I'll be looking at plugholes to see water disappearing in the opposite direction," she laughs. "Seriously, the New Zealand landscape is legendary and even though I've never seen The Lord of the Rings, I've had serious envy any time I've seen friends' travelogues. I hear Sam Neill owns a vineyard and we have mutual friends, so I imagine turning up at his front door to say hi - but I doubt that's going to happen. He was SO GOOD in Peaky Blinders playing an Irishman."

The success of Nugent's writing – disturbing reads packed with beautiful storytelling and monstrous characters – is what's bringing her to Aotearoa for the first time. Next month she'll appear onstage in Dunedin as one of the international stars at the Celtic Noir festival, alongside the likes of Scotland's Val McDermid and Northern Ireland's Adrian McKinty as well as local authors Dame Fiona Kidman, Vanda Symon and Liam McIlvanney.

But back in the mid-1970s, 6 years old and hospitalised, writing was something Nugent had no chance of doing at even the most basic level. She was a kid who devoured books and had just learned how to write, then suddenly couldn't. Despite months of agonising physiotherapy following her accident, the neurological damage meant she was writing upside down and her hand would spasm and tear the pages. Her right hand has never fully recovered.

During the years to follow, a determined Nugent learned to scribble with her left hand. Even if her writing was illegible or upside down, at least that hand didn't spasm. The big breakthrough came after computers became part of everyday work life from the late 1990s. Nugent avoided using them for a while (too painful and difficult) but as more and more things needed to be typed up at many workplaces, she taught herself to type one-handed. The door cracked open.

"Shakespeare wrote with one hand and a feather, so I still have the advantage over him," she says cheerfully as we discuss the ongoing effects of her dystonia. "Not that I'd want to compare myself to Shakespeare, whose tragedies were also quite an influence on my writing."

At the time, Nugent was working in stage production for theatre shows. She travelled the world with Riverdance (meeting her musician husband when the show was launched on Broadway). Years later, she worked as a story associate on Irish soap opera Fair City but hungered for more creative freedom. She wrote a short story about a successful author who seemingly out-of-nowhere beats his wife into a coma, then later decided to try expanding it into a novel.

"Writing for television is so much of a collaboration that you cannot really claim it as your own work," says Nugent. "A director or an actor or a lighting designer can take what you have written in a completely different direction. I wanted to write something that I had ownership of, although I have to credit my editor with very sound advice."

Nugent didn't set out to write a thriller, saying she didn't think about genre at all.

"I simply wrote the story that had been in my head for many years, and as I wrote it, it became darker and more sinister," she says. "The impetus to write Unravelling Oliver was extreme dissatisfaction with my day job, working on a soap opera. I had been there over 10 years, slowly going insane. Writing a book was my escape plan, it was my Rita Hayworth poster. I chipped away at it for six years before I finally finished it and it was released."

Nugent's further books have continued the trend of her debut: chilling psychological thrillers that orbit the lives of memorably monstrous protagonists, each performing the duet of commercial and critical acclaim as #1 best-sellers and prize-winning novels. Lying in Wait involved a respected judge and his obsessive wife who had buried a prostitute in their back garden. Skin Deep centred on Cordelia Russell, a childhood survivor of a tragedy on an Irish island who grew into an ageing socialite on the French Riviera, leaving chaos and ruin in her wake.

For Nugent, it always begins with character. Usually in an extreme situation, faced with a choice.

"When they make the wrong choices, that's where I get my plot," she says. "I then examine all the steps that led to this situation, usually involving a corpse and play out the consequences. Who are the other characters affected by this action and what do they think? Setting is important to me too. The gothic style house in Lying in Wait set the tone for that book and the remote island in Skin Deep was perfectly matched to the protagonist's personality: wild, distant, dangerous, beautiful, un-nurturing."

While readers and reviewers describe Nugent's characters with terms like "deliciously appalling", "monstrous but captivating", "psychopathic yet beguiling", Nugent herself has more sympathy.

"Because I always write first-person narratives, when I wrote these monstrous characters I AM them for the duration of the process [in my head], so I have to rationalise every bad deed, every jealous thought, and every malicious intent. I look back at the character's past and find incidents maybe from childhood or early adulthood that explain how these characters turned out the way they did. It's very cathartic to be a total bastard in your head sometimes. I highly recommend it."

Liz Nugent is in conversation with Fiona Sussman at Te Manawa Community Hub in Massey on Thursday, September 26 and with Zoe Rankin at McLeods Booksellers in Rotorua on Saturday, September 28. She's also has events in Wellington, Nelson, and as part of the Celtic Noir Festival in Dunedin in October.