Sinéad Moriarty has opened up about the inspiration behind her latest novel Seven Letters.
Nominated for National Book Tokens Popular Fiction Book of the Year in the An Post Irish Book Awards, Seven Letters tells the story of Sarah, a young mum who, when she’s almost four months pregnant with her long longed-for second child, collapses unexpectedly.
With Sarah’s future, and the future of her pregnancy, in their hands, her husband Adam and sister Mia disagree fiercely about her treatment. And her seven-year-old daughter, Izzy, thinks her mummy is sleeping – and that she’ll wake up for her communion day.
The once close family starts to fall apart, as they struggle to try and explain to her what they are finding near impossible to understand themselves.
Sinéad told Her how a case she had read about a few years ago led her to wonder what you would do if it was someone you cared about in that situation – a question which, years later, would spark Seven Letters.
While she didn’t pursue the idea for awhile, she told how it stayed with her for years. Eventually, she decided to start looking into it a bit more.
“About five years ago, coming up to Christmas, there was an awful case I read about about a woman who was pregnant and had been declared brain dead,” she recalled. “And it’s different to the case in my book, but it made me think:what would you do if it was your sister your wife and the baby still had a tiny chance of survival?
“I kind of forgot about the [idea of Seven Letters] for awhile. But every now and then I would think about and kind of go, ‘no, nonono.'”
“Eventually, I think if an idea stays with you and keeps coming back and back to you, it means that you should [look into it],” she added. “I started looking into it, looking into other cases in the world. Slowly and surely, I started putting the book together and researching. There was a lot of research involved.
“But it was really interesting – and heartbreaking, obviously.”
She added that one of the most important things to her in the book was that the reader would be able to see both sides of the family’s story.
“Adam, the husband, he wants to try and save her. But her sister and her father think it’s inhumane,” she said. “The important thing to me was to show both sides of the story. I totally see where Adam is coming from, but I also see where Mia and Charlie [her father] are coming from. I think that’s important, to portray those sides.
“The beauty, I think, of writing about it – and I always write about pretty strong issues – is that it forces you as a writer to see both sides of the story. By the time I’ve finished the book, I’ve actually changed my own opinion.”
Th Dublin author admitted that while becoming a full-time writer was something she always wanted to do, it wasn’t until she turned 30 that she took the leap and joined a creative writing class.
“It was [something I always wanted to do], but it wasn’t until I turned 30 that I had the confidence to join a creative writing group and really push myself to try,” she recalled. “I had been working as a journalist, but it was on trade magazines. So, really, when I turned 30 I thought, ‘well, it’s now or never.
“And so I joined a creative writing group. But when I opened the door that day, and walked into that room, I feel like I found my stride. I knew that this was where I was meant to be, and that this is what I was meant to do.”
“Having said that, you never know if it’s going to work or not – as I always say, my first two books failed miserably to get published. It was my third book, The Baby Trail, that did – and now I write for a living,” she said.
Seven Letters, released in May this year, was nominated for National Book Tokens Popular Fiction Book of the Year in the An Post Irish Book Awards on Thursday night.
“It’s great, you know – I think this is my tenth nomination,” Sinéad said, as she spoke about how it felt to be shortlisted. “It’s really gratifying, and I think the longer you’re in the writing game – I’m in it nearly 20 years now – the more you appreciate these kind of things.”
Sinéad Moriarty is nominated for National Book Tokens Popular Fiction Book of the Year in the An Post Irish Book Awards for her book ‘Seven Letters’. You can vote for your favourite at anpostirishbookawards.ie.
