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BOOKS

How Mary Costello was slowly brought to book

The author of The River Capture spent years resisting the urge to write, and expects her next novel to take another five years

The Sunday Times
Baring her soul: Costello admits most of her characters are based on herself
Baring her soul: Costello admits most of her characters are based on herself
BRYAN MEADE

Mary Costello was an unusual sort of aspiring writer. While most are desperate to be published, and furiously scribble in every spare moment, she spent half her adult life trying to suppress the urge to write. Despite her best efforts, stories would “press up”. She would write them, put them away, and then do nothing further for six months or even a year.

“I didn’t welcome it. I regarded it as an interruption to my life,” she says of the writing itch. “I wanted to be normal, to be like everyone else, like my sisters and friends. I felt this was a disruption, something that disturbed me and my equilibrium, but it wouldn’t go away.”

Early on, at the age of 22, she had two short stories published in New Irish Writing, a prestigious literary platform then hosted in the Sunday Tribune, from which many of Ireland’s most successful writers have vaulted to success, including Sebastian Barry, Anne Enright, Joseph O’Connor and Neil Jordan. But Costello took a step back from the springboard, got married and began a career in teaching. “Writing slipped into the margins of my life,” she says.

When her marriage broke up in her thirties, writing re-emerged, but it was not until she was in her forties that she submitted stories to the literary magazine The Stinging Fly. “I eventually surrendered to it, if you like,” she laughs.

The China Factory, her debut collection of stories, followed in 2012. It was immediately obvious that Costello was a fully formed writer — restrained, observant, philosophical. So why had it taken her so long to publish? “Confidence would be a part of it, I think,” she admits. Costello is softly spoken, courteous, a gentle presence. It is impossible to imagine her pushing herself forward.

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In 2014, she published a debut novel, Academy Street, which told the story of Tess, an Irish emigrée to New York in the 1960s. It won the Bord Gais Energy Irish Book of the Year, the Eason Novel of the Year, and a Costa First Novel nomination.

This week Costello publishes a second novel, The River Capture. Five years in the making, it is an intellectual romp through language and world philosophy, and a self-confessed homage to James Joyce. It is a noticeable gear shift for the diffident author, showcasing the long overdue arrival of an undeniable confidence.

She defines the novel as an exploration of what it means to be alive. Her protagonist is 34-year-old Luke O’Brien, who has returned from Dublin to his rural family home, searching for meaning and direction.

We meet in Costello’s home town of Galway, to which she recently returned after 30 years of living and working in Dublin. She lives with her partner, the writer Martin Roper. Doesn’t she sound a bit like the protagonist in her book? Costello happily agrees with the notion that all writing is autobiographical, regardless of whether it’s about male or female characters.

“Flaubert was asked after writing Madame Bovary, ‘Who is Madame Bovary?’ and he said, ‘Madame Bovary, c’est moi.’ And for me, I’m Luke. Of course, every character I write is a composite of people I know, but mostly it’s the author themselves. Obviously we turn it up and we turn it down, but I can only know my own mind and what filters through it so, ‘Luke, c’est moi.’ ”

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The concept of a “river capture” is the thematic heart of the book. “It’s a geological phenomenon whereby a river suddenly changes direction, is diverted off its course, and captures or pirates the path of another river. So it’s a theft of a kind,” she explains.

It’s tempting to look at Costello’s life in this way too, a writer who veered off course due to the everyday concerns of marriage and work, but she doesn’t see it that way. Does she have regrets about putting on hold what was clearly a promising early career as a writer? “No, funnily enough, because I did what was natural. I couldn’t force it to come any sooner.”

Costello writes insightfully about relationships, particularly those that are lonely or unfulfilled, calcified by familiarity, or one-sided desire and broken communication.

In reality, she is optimistic about love. Was she hesitant to fall in love again, lest it might take her away from writing? “Not really. What’s the worst that can happen?” Oh, you know, heartbreak, devastation, the usual stuff. “But you still have your mind,” she says, bemused. “And you still have your thoughts.

“And I could still write. I know it’s painful — to be human is to suffer — but in the end, nothing is wasted. The heart enlarges. Even when love goes wrong, nothing is ever wasted.”

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Costello grew up on a farm in east Galway. She describes her childhood as “ordinary, stable, perhaps a bit sheltered”. She moved to Dublin to study English at the age of 17. When she decided to write (she distinguishes between “wanting to write” and “wanting to be a writer”), she signed up for a six-week VEC evening class on creative writing. “The man who ran it worked in the tyre factory in Ballyfermot.”

Does she think such courses, or even the more prestigious ones, really generate original writing? “They’re definitely very useful. Martin teaches creative writing, so I have a much better view of it now,” she says. “One of the great things they can do is teach you to read closely. Perhaps if I had done one I might have got there earlier, but I don’t think so. I don’t know if I would like to unpack how I write anyway. I would be afraid I mightn’t be able to put it together again, like taking a watch apart. My teachers are the people I read.”

One of those is Joyce, and The River Capture is a love poem to Ulysses, covering topics as diverse as consciousness, sexuality, IVF, science, philosophy, death, sex, love, evolution and the extinction of humanity.

“Joyce gives us the permission to do anything as writers. You can write about love, death, sex and a fried kidney. I’m in love with Joyce. He’s so real, there were days I could hardly believe he is dead. I still grieve for him sometimes. I know that sounds odd, but I do.”

She suggests her next book may well take another five years to write. Her writing process takes time. Her publishers are patient, never pressuring her, even when The River Capture was years late. She almost returned to teaching while writing it. “I had resigned my teaching job in 2016. Last year I actually renewed my membership of the Teaching Council in order to go back teaching for financial reasons. Long term, it would be difficult to live on literary fiction.”

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An Arts Council bursary came at just the right moment, and gave her the time and confidence she needed to finish the novel.

Her writing is no longer something she tries to suppress, or push to the margins of her life. “If I’m not writing, I don’t feel right. When I am writing, I don’t feel right either — but I feel less wrong.”

The River Capture by Mary Costello is published by Canongate

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