The House of Memories (36 page)

Dear Felix,

I know I said I wasn’t going to write to you anymore but tomorrow is the two-year anniversary of you leaving us and I need to mark it somehow. Actually, I just felt like writing to you again.

I am in Spain at the moment. With your mum. With Ella. I wondered for a long time if I would ever feel happy again after you left us, but I am the closest thing to feeling it again. I missed your mum so much, Felix. I never stopped loving her. But we were both so sad and hurting so much that we needed to be away from each other for a while. I always hoped we could be together again one day, once we had both done all the thinking and crying we needed to do.

We are on holiday in Barcelona, a beautiful city full of great buildings and a long treelined street called Las Ramblas. I’ve taught your mum how to order tapas and to ask for directions. As she said herself, it goes well until someone says something in Spanish in return. She says I need to stay close. I’m very happy to do that. I also got to teach her some French on this holiday. We spent a weekend in France (before we came to Spain) with your granny and Walter and your Ess. They are all in the south of France filming Granny’s TV series. Your mum and I got to watch a day of it. Between you and me, Felix, your granny is a terrible cook. She was trying to make a traditional French fish soup and I’m sure I’m not the only one who thought the final product looked more like dirty dishwashing water than a French delicacy. But she laughed a lot while she was making it, and tried to speak a bit of French, and before long all the crew were laughing too, not to mention the poor bewildered French people watching. Jess—sorry, Ess—joined in, trying out a bit of French as well as a bit of cooking. I’m sorry to say she takes after her mother on the cooking front. They make a very good comedy double-act. You just wouldn’t want to eat their food. They are going to Germany to do some filming next (Walter is looking forward to that) and then on to England. Your granny said she can’t wait to cook (or should I say try to cook) that great English dish toad-in-the-hole. Unfortunately, I can already imagine some of the jokes she’ll make about that.

Your mum and I are here in Spain for a week and then it’s back home to Washington. We both like living there very much. It’s a beautiful, interesting city and my job there is very interesting too. (Last week I had to translate a document about the impact of pollution on the lizard colonies of the Nevada desert from American English into Spanish, German and French. I am now a lizard expert.) Your mum is working as an editor again, for a publisher she used to do some work with in Australia. It’s an amazing world, Felix—she is editing on-screen these days, rather than sitting surrounded by piles of paper as she used to be in Canberra. If you were still with us, going to school soon, probably already comfortable on a computer, you would take this for granted, but old fogies like us think it’s incredible.

It’s June here in Spain, and the weather is perfect, warm, not hot. All the old stone buildings seem to glow in the sunshine. The Spanish people love their kids as much as the Irish and Australians do—we often see families out together in restaurants. And we think about you all the time, of course, and wish you were here with us. But you know that. That will never change.

I like to imagine that you are keeping an eye on us wherever you are, Felix. We think of you with as many smiles as tears now. I never thought that day would come. Some days are still harder than others. But your mum and I talk about you so much and that helps.

We are planning another trip soon, not as far as Spain this time, just a few hours away to Boston, to see your uncle Charlie and auntie Lucy and your cousins. They miss you too. Your mum often talks to them on Skype and says she’ll be surprised when she meets them again to find they’re full-size, she’s so used to seeing tiny versions on a computer screen.

Felix, we miss you every day. We are different now. All of us. In the same way your coming into our lives changed us in so many ways, your leaving us did too. But we are learning to live without you. Your mum is laughing again. I always loved her laugh and loved making her laugh. It was amazing that you laughed the same way, as though you were both saying “Hahahaha.” When she laughs now, it’s another great excuse to think about you.

Your auntie Ess is much better. She is still very sad too, and fragile, we know that, but she is back singing and dancing again, and seems to be entertaining all the crew filming with her in Europe. Your mum didn’t spend a lot of time alone with her when we met up in France, but they did talk about general things, like the weather and the filming. I also know Jess showed her the tattoo of your name. Your mum found that hard, I think. But she said afterward that she was glad to see it and glad that we would always know what height you were. All those little reminders of you help us: the photos, the stories about you that we like to share.

We’re hoping your great-uncle Lucas will come and visit us in Washington soon, for a week or two. He’s about to get a lot of work done on his big and very messy fox-filled house in London (where your mum and I met), so he’ll come over while that’s happening. On his own, your mum hopes, not with his girlfriend. Her name is Henrietta and your mum doesn’t approve of her at all. I’ve met her, and between you and me, she’s not that bad. Your mum is just very protective of her uncle Lucas.

Felix, your mum and I are talking about having another baby. We would love it if it happened and we hope it will happen soon. No one will ever replace you. But one of our secret hopes is that because a new baby will be half your mum and half me, as you were, it will be similar to you in some way. Maybe he or she will get that same look of mischief that you used to get. Maybe he or she will also have an obsession with brooms. Maybe he or she will shout his or her name out loud too. I know we will love that new baby and I know he or she will also help us to remember you. Not that we could ever forget you. Not our little Felix O’Hanlon.

I love you and miss you so much, Felix.

Dad xx

M
y big thanks to all the people who shared family stories with me, especially Lisa Houatchanthara, Andre Sawenko, Xavier McInerney, Marie McInerney, Mikaella, Ulli, Ruby and Raf Clements, Jane Melross and Lizzie and Joe Arnold. For their help in many different ways, my thanks also to Lee O’Neill, Austin O’Neill, Max Fatchen, Brona Looby, Ethan Miller, Sabine Brasseler, Michael Boyny, Clare Forster, Sarah Duffy, Rosie Duffy, Kristin Gill, Bonnie Gill, Catherine Foley, Carol George, Mary Connolly, Rob McInerney, T. Bella Dinh-Zarr, Robert Zarr, Karen O’Connor, Bart Meldau, John, Bonnie and Stephanie Dickenson, Maria Dickenson, Ciaran McNally, Noëlle Harrison
,
Sinéad Moriarty, Noelene Turner, Helen Trinca, Robin Trinca and Hollie Blakeney.

This book is dedicated to my nieces and nephews in Australia, Ireland and Germany: Bernard, Nicholas, Patrick, Sam, Mikaella, Ulli, Ruby, Raf, Hannah, Dominic, Xavier, Callan, Mia, Catherine, Domhnall, Hannah and Thea. My love and thanks too to my two families, the McInerneys in Australia and the Drislanes in Ireland.

Many thanks to my publishers and agents around the world: Ali Watts, Arwen Summers, Saskia Adams, Gabrielle Coyne, Louise Ryan, Sally Bateman, Chantelle Sturt and everyone at Penguin Australia; Trisha Jackson, Natasha Harding, Jodie Mullish, David Adamson, Sophie Ransom of Midas PR, Gráinne Killeen and all at Pan Macmillan UK; Ellen Edwards, Elizabeth Bistrow, Michele Alpern and all at New American Library/Penguin; Fiona Inglis and the team at Curtis Brown Australia; Jonathan Lloyd, Kate Cooper and all at Curtis Brown London; Gráinne Fox at Fletcher and Company in New York and Anoukh Foerg in Germany. Thanks very much also to James Williams, Justin Tabari, Sarah Conroy and Ashley Miller for their Web site and photographic help.

Finally and as always, my love and thanks to my sister Maura and my husband, John, for all they do to help me write each novel.

A CONVERSATION WITH MONICA M
C
INERNEY

Q:
The House of Memories
is a bit of a departure from your previous books in that the catalyst for the story is a tragedy. What inspired you to write it?

A. The starting point was the idea of a blended family. All of my novels are family comedy-dramas, and I wanted to explore the ties and tensions within a family group when the blood links are more complicated, with half sisters, stepbrothers, stepparents, etc. I wondered how a family like that would react to something seismic, whether it would be possible to forgive someone if you were never sure how much you’d loved them in the first place.

I spent a lot of time deciding what that seismic event would be. Then, one night, I attended a crime writers’ conference (as an observer) here in Dublin. One of the writers said the starting point for her novels was thinking about her own greatest fears, and then putting her characters through them.

That struck a real chord with me. I realized one of my greatest fears is something happening to one of my nieces or nephews while I’m looking after them. More than a decade ago, it nearly happened, when the baby niece I was minding started to choke on a piece of fruit. I’d turned away for just a moment and in that time she had turned blue. I only just got to her in time. Even though that story had a happy ending, I’ve never forgotten the feeling of terror. What if I hadn’t turned around when I did? The entire landscape of my family would have changed. Would my sister, the baby’s mother, ever have been able to forgive me? Could I ever have forgiven myself? I know that memory was the seed for this novel.

Q. What do you hope that readers will take away from reading the novel?

A. I hope readers will be entertained, moved and amused, but I especially hope they’ll feel as though they have been right there beside Ella and her family through their journey from the shock and sadness of grief to a kind of peace and understanding.

Q. Although the novel is about a family that is grieving a terrible loss, it never feels depressing. How did you manage that?

A. I’m sure it comes from my own experience of life after loss. When my father died of cancer in 2000, it was as if our family solar system had lost a planet. We had to find a new shape for our family, and we all reacted in different ways. But we also laughed so much together. I can remember being shocked about it at the time—how could we possibly be finding so many things so funny? I realize now it’s because our feelings were so raw—everything seems so vivid at a time of deep sadness and emotion like that. We were all easily moved to tears but also the bright moments and the funny moments seemed to shine very brightly.

A lot of the humor in
The House of Memories
comes from Charlie’s entries about his family, especially his four children. Again, I remember my young nieces and nephews being like rays of sunshine in our dark and sad household after Dad died. I tried very hard to portray that sense of light illuminating times of darkness in
The House of Memories
.

Q. You have a wonderful knack for creating characters that fascinate us, and arouse our empathy, even when they are behaving badly. Jess is a perfect example of that. What’s your secret?

A. Thank you very much—I work very hard on making my characters as real and well-rounded as I can, so I’m so glad to hear that. I think it’s from years of observing people around me with a (sometimes too) curious eye. I think we are all a mixture of traits—good, bad, generous, selfish. . . . Different events bring different parts of our personality to the surface. We also never show all of ourselves to one another. There are always at least two sides to every story, as I wanted to show with Jess, in particular. She drove me mad with her vanity and self-absorption, but my heart often broke for her too, knowing the guilt and anguish she was feeling underneath.

Q. As in
The House of Memories
, the action in your novels often revolves around a wonderful, rambling, big old house. Can you share something about what big houses mean to you?

A. I’ve only recently realized that so many of my novels have a big house at the heart of them! I am sure that comes from my own childhood. I grew up in the small country town of Clare in South Australia, where my father was the railway stationmaster. My family (Mum, Dad and my six brothers and sisters and I) lived in the stationmaster’s house just meters from the station, beside rolling hills and in sight of the railway tracks. It was a large, rambling house, set high on a hill, with terraced gardens and fruit trees all around, and a shady veranda spanning all four sides. It was like an adventure playground to us all. We played games of hide-and-seek and chase up on the veranda, to the great alarm of my mother many meters below! I also spent hours alone up on the roof, leaning against one of the chimneys, hiding and reading.

The house made me feel safe and special, all at once. I always loved coming home to it, as a child and as an adult. My parents ran an open house—apart from the nine of us, there were always so many visitors coming and going. I never knew who might be there when I opened the squeaky side gate or walked in through the (never locked) front door. Those memories of a big house filled with constant action, comedy and drama, the sense that you never know what might happen next or who might walk through the door with a shocking announcement, definitely feeds into my novels now.

Q.
The House of Memories
has already been published in Australia, Ireland and England. Is there anything in particular that you’d like to share about the response you’ve received to the novel so far?

A. I’ve been overwhelmed by the response to this story. I’ve had more e-mail and letters about it than any of my books to date. It has moved me so much to hear from readers, and to realize that so many people in the world have sadly experienced the raw grief that Ella feels. One e-mail in particular touched me very much, from a mother who had recently lost her daughter to illness. She thanked me for giving her “permission” to feel all that she was feeling: wanting to run away as fast as she could, the anger, the endless sorrow. She told me my book had given her hope that one day in the future, like Ella, she might be able to feel life has some joy to it again.

Q. You divide your time between Australia, where you were raised, and Ireland, where your husband is from. What do you most like about moving back and forth between the two countries? What are some of the cultural similarities and differences?

A. I think I’m spoiled to have two of the best countries in the world to call home. I do think of them both as my homes too—if I’m in Australia I talk about going “home” to Ireland and vice versa. I think moving so often is good for me as a writer—it keeps me observant, watchful for details and also in the role of “outsider” to an extent, all of which feeds into my plotlines and characters in some way. I also have big families in both countries (my husband is one of six), so there is always plenty of inspiration waiting in each country too!

Irish and Australian people are very similar, with a ready sense of humor, love of a chat, a disregard for too much authority. The links between the two countries are so strong; one in five Australians claim Irish heritage, and there are thousands of young Irish people living and working in Australia at the moment, for adventure and to escape the recession on this side of the world. Irish people often question my sanity, choosing to live in Ireland’s damp climate compared to Australia’s bright sunshine. The truth is I love cold, gray weather—I think I had enough of blazing summers and 104-degree days as a child!

Q. Can you share a little about how you go about writing each novel? I’m interested in where you write, and for how long each week, in addition to how you go about developing your plot and characters.

A. I generally get the idea for a new book about halfway through the writing of the “current” one, sparked by a minor character, a subplot or sometimes even a line of dialogue that I want to explore further. I think about each book for about six months before I physically start writing it. I imagine the characters, the dilemma that will be at the heart of my new family, how the plot will twist and turn. When I begin writing a book, I never know what will happen at the end. I like to be taken by surprise. I also spend a lot of time deciding on my characters’ names and can’t start work until their names feel right.

Once that basic foundation is in place—back to the house image again!—I choose a starting date and from that day on, I don’t stop until I reach my ending, generally at the stroke of midnight on deadline day. I write a minimum of two thousand words a day, and won’t leave my office unless I have done that. A story comes together like a house (yes, there it is again!). I build it brick by brick. In the early stages I write Monday to Friday, but usually about a third of the way in, it takes over my life completely and I am writing or editing seven days a week. I also usually develop insomnia about three-quarters of the way through. With
The House of Memories
, I started waking every night at 3:14 am, on the dot. I’d lie there for an hour or two untangling plot knots, thinking of dialogue, sleep again for an hour or two and then get up, make a cup of coffee, go straight to my desk and write down all that I’d imagined in the night.

My office is in the attic of our house in inner-city Dublin. I have two skylights that let in plenty of light (on the days when we get sunshine here) but more often there is rain pattering against the glass. It’s a beautiful place to write, high up, warm and peaceful.

Q. What kinds of books do you enjoy reading? Who are some of your favorite writers? Have certain writers particularly influenced your work?

A. I read all and everything, and have done since I was a child. I learned to read as a four-year-old, encouraged by my mother, who worked in the local library, and then by great teachers at school. I read fiction and nonfiction, poetry, biographies, guidebooks, cook- books. . . . My favorite writers include Charlotte Brontë, Jane Austen, Curtis Sittenfeld, John le Carré, Kristan Higgins, Laurie Graham, Benjamin Black, Tana French, Roald Dahl, Garrison Keillor, David Sedaris, Maeve Binchy, Elinor Lipman, Rosamunde Pilcher. . . .

All writers influence me in some way; I’m sure of it. I learn from good books, trying to discover why a plot has gripped me so much or why I care about a character so much—how has the author made me feel so connected to the story? If another book hasn’t captured me in quite the same way, I also try to work out why and then do my best to avoid that in my own writing.

Q. Although this is your first novel published in the U.S. by New American Library/Penguin, you’ve previously written nine novels and a short story collection. How did you originally come to be a writer? How long have you been doing it? And can you tell us a little about what you’re working on now?

A. I wrote my first book as an eight-year-old. It was called “The Smith Family Goes to Perth on the Train.” I’ve since realized I don’t have to sum up the entire plot in the title. I know that I’m a writer because I’m a reader. As a child, I read everything I could and it really felt like a natural progression for me to try to make up my own stories. I wrote plays for my family, poems, little songs, limericks, bad jokes. . . . My sister, brother and I also produced an annual family magazine called
The McInerney Report
, an issue a year for ten years, filled with scandalous stories about one another.

I began seriously writing short stories in 1997, submitting them for publication to magazines in Australia. I wrote in every genre I could think of: crime, fantasy, comedy, high drama. Looking back now, I realize I was trying to find my own voice as a writer. I was rejected many times, but I loved the writing process so much I kept going, and kept sending them out for publication. I was like an air traffic controller—I knew exactly where all my stories were at any given time, coming in or going out. Eventually, three were published in quick succession—all of them family stories with plenty of humor and a twist at the end—and that gave me the confidence to start my own first novel.

Again, it was a labor of love—I would write a chapter, send it to my sister Maura, who would read and encourage me to keep going, because she wanted to find out what happened next. The day I finished that story, I heard about a Write a Bestseller competition being run by an Irish publisher and newspaper. I entered, came runner-up, and that was the start for me. Since then, I’ve written many more short stories and nine novels. The first three were romantic comedies with a family background, but since then they have been more family comedy-dramas, with a romantic element.

I’m in the early stages of my new book, thoroughly enjoying the thinking, the plotting and the research. It’s too early for me to say too much, but I know it’s going to be filled with lots of misbehaving characters and plenty of family secrets and surprises. . . .