REVIEW JTJ AND EVENTS

Liam Murphy reviewed Joyride to Jupiter in yesterday's Munster Express:

'There was a time when people expected short stories to be like single theme short novellas, and then magazine fiction changed all that. Stories got shorter and often became like poems, vague like a fleeting image, a flash of emotion, a realisation without resolution. Collections of short stories seemed to be based on a theme or trope; infidelity, expectation, imperfection, loneliness, betrayal and the modern one of uncoupling couples.

Nuala O'Connor who used to be Nuala Ní Chonchúir until Penguin USA insisted on  'identity clarity' for Miss Emily - O'Connor's most successful novel. Her fourth novel will be out next year, and the collection, Joyride To Jupiter is her sixth collection of short stories, alongside four poetry books. I feel like writing Nuala Ní rather than Nuala O.

An Ovid quotation suggests a collection about the 'perjuries of lovers', but there is an 'occasional' feel about some of these stories. This book has been with me during the best summer ever and rarely was I disappointed. A few stories I had to reread to understand, but perhaps I was seduced by the language and the fresh, Irishness of her phrasing.

The title story, 'Joyride To Jupiter' surprised me and took me unawares. When I got to 'Futuretense', another story with a makeup or cosmetic theme, I went back and read both together, seeking a linking theme.

'SquidInky' about a tattooist was my favourite with its visual, descriptive style and a line "Spitting women and crowing hens will surely come to some bad ends", led into one of the loneliest passage in the story "My heart opens and closes like a mouth that wants to speak but can't form the words". Nuala O can form the words and can seesaw the human heart as in 'The Boy From Petropolis' and 'Napoli Abu'. Where the opening line is a catcher for a page turner "Fuck knows how I ended up agreeing to go to Naples with a spinster".

The shorter stories didn't satisfy me, but the last story 'Storks' caught the mood of a hidden past, a 'betrayal' that gets in the way of present happiness. The last page is as sensual a thrill as you could ask for "All will be well".'

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Next Saturday I am reading with Alan McMonagle, moderated by Catherine Dunne, at the inaugural Bray Literary Festival. 2pm, Bray Town Hall. More about the fest here.

And on Culture Night, this Friday, the artist collective I am a member of, Group 8, has the opening of its annual exhibition. This one is called Majesty in the Minute. 6.30pm, Ballinasloe Library. More at our blog here.

I had a great time in Cork at the Short Story Festival last weekend but am way, way to busy to blog it, sadly. My new novel (novel #5!) has joyfully taken over my head and my life, and I have a ton of other projects and things I'm involved in too. Busy is good. Too busy can be a bit of a headwreck. Onward!

JOELY RICHARDSON AS EMILY DICKINSON - OFF-BROADWAY

When I was in New York last week I went to the Westside Theatre's production of The Belle of Amherst, off Broadway. It's one-hander by William Luce and the role was made famous by Julie Harris. This time Joely Richardson plays Emily Dickinson.

When the play was announced, some of the madsers on Facebook had a little hate party. Here's one typical comment: '''Emily Dickinson'' to be made into a movie??????? (sic) ''Emily'' is not a face, but, an idea inside of the Ideal, a cosmic metaphor grasped, then given gravity on a sigh, or the whim of wonder, from our menial intellects. And, you want to personify that abundance of knowledge within the frame of a has-been Actress! Please People, don't send Emily's name to the lost world, by allowing this woman to even attempt going inside the mind of Emily Dickinson. We want our Children, and there (sic) Children to remember ''Emily's'' name. This is not the way to do 'Emily Dickinson'' justice.'

Yes, this is what you're up against - cosmic metaphors and all. If the film of my Miss Emily novel gets made (touch wood) I imagine there will be more choice viewpoints such as the above to contend with.

I suffer from Pre Theatre Stress. I am always trepidatious going to the theatre, to any gig or play. I fear that I will waste a couple of hours of my life on a below par performance and I'm just too impatient for that. It is mostly misplaced - I rarely don't enjoy the theatre. And, glad to say, Joely was wonderful as Emily - she was intense, witty, energetic, moving and warm. Just the Emily I know. Her accent was great (not one dip in it) and she used the set well. I took a sneaky pic of the set with my phone, it's not great but I add it for what it's worth.

The stage is split in two - to the left Emily's bedroom, slightly elevated, where she writes. To the right, the parlour, where she receives visitors. Emily addresses the audience as if we are visitors to her home and, with words taken from her letters and poems, she tells us about her life and those closest to her: her brother and sister, Austin and Vinnie, her parents, her beloved sister-in-law Sue, her 'preceptor' Thomas Wentworth Higginson (who edited her poems after her death) etc. She has one-sided conversations with these people and that, surprisingly, works really well.

Joely as Emily - pic by Carol Rosegg, Wall St Journal

Joely Richardson has incredibly expressive hands and she uses them brilliantly as she flits like a bird around the stage, telling us her recipe for Black Cake one minute and the next, heartbreakingly, recounting the death of her nephew, Gib. She cries (briefly) many times during the course of the play (I cried along) and this helped get across the fervency and depth of Emily's personality. I thoroughly enjoyed witnessing the themes and the poems that chime with my own novel - it made me giddy to hear/see them played out in front of me. It makes my book seem very real and makes me fall in love with Emily and her world all over again.

I've now seen both covers for the novel - the USA/Canada one and the UK one. They are both very pretty and also quite different to each other. I can't wait to show them off. My book tour in the States next July is being planned and meetings with booksellers in Massachusetts next spring too, so I'll be back and forth a bit, it seems. It's so exciting and I love America, so it's all good. I should be able to announce the UK publisher soon (contract is signed) and do a cover reveal for the UK side too. Looking forward to sharing it with you all.

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The New York Times review of the play is here. The Hollywood Reporter has a kinder one here.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE - GATE THEATRE - REVIEW

Sam O'Mahony as Darcy & Lorna Quinn as Lizzie

My husband brought me to Pride and Prejudice at The Gate for my birthday at the weekend. There can hardly be an adult reader who has not read P&P, Jane Austen's novel of the Bennett sisters, afflicted with loving but foolish parents, who let them down in various ways. This was The Gate's Christmas offering but it has been breaking box office records and continues it's run (with limited availability) until the 8th of February.

I may have set myself up badly for the show by rewatching the BBC mini-series that featured Colin Firth as Mr Darcy and Jennifer Ehle as Lizzie - surely the most sublime Lizzie ever. I am also reading Jo Baker's most enjoyable Longbourn, which tells the story of P&P from the point of view of Mrs Hill and the other Bennett servants. (I'm very interested in it having just finished writing a domestic service novel set in the 19th C - ooh, Jo Baker writes well!) Anyway, with heads full of Ehle's Lizzie, we took ourselves to The Gate and what we saw was very enjoyable, with a few minor quibbles. One of those being dropped accents - surely at this stage of the run the actors should have their English accents down pat?

The Bennett girls, hungry for husbands

Lorna Quinn was a vivacious Lizzie and acted as narrator at times to speed along what was already a full-throttle production. P&P is a long novel and it is always difficult to present it as a play without galloping through the plot. One of the ways they did this was to dispense with some characters - there was just one Miss Bingley, for example,which handily got rid of the other sister and her drunken husband. Rebecca O'Mara stole the show as Caroline Bingley with her spot-on fusion of grace and bitchiness in a polished, perfect accent.

Rebecca O'Mara - excellent as Miss Bingley and Aoibhín Garrihy - a warm and lovely Jane Bennett

Stephen Brennan played Mr Bennett in the way he should be played, with humour and tenderness (when is Brennan ever below par?) and Eleanor Methven as Mrs Bennett was also as silly and hysterical as she should be without flowing over into pantomime. Mark O'Regan was very good as the repulsive Bennett cousin, clergyman Mr Collins - he stuttered and simpered beautifully. The other Bennett sisters filled their roles well: studious Mary, flighty Lydia, whingy Kitty. It was Aoibhín Garrihy who stood out here with her perfectly serene and likeable Jane.

Stephen Swift made a sweet and amiable Mr Bingley and Sam O'Mahony certainly looked the part as Darcy (he is tall, dark and handsome enough for him), but he hadn't enough to do and I didn't see any real warmth grow between him and Lizzie - that may have been due to the rushed nature of everything. But they might have danced more, for example.

Barbara Brennan, another consummate actress, was suitably present and imposing as Lady Catherine de Bourgh but I do think director Alan Stanford might have resisted giving her repeated lines for comedy. As a character, de Bourgh is a frightening prospect with her outrageous snobbery and self-righteousness. I would have preferred if she was left to be as hideous as she is - in a serious way - rather than mine her for laughs.

A rather crappy phone pic I took of the set

Bruno Scwengl's set is beautiful if a little static. I liked that the set-movers were in period costume and gave the impression of being the servants of the house.

All in all a very enjoyable production and, if the audience on Friday night are anything to go by, it is going down very well with Austen fans in Dublin.

Pride and Prejudice runs at The Gate until the 8th February. This week is sold out, but it is always worth a try for returns. And there are tickets available for the following weeks.

RACHEL TREZISE - COSMIC LATTE - REVIEW

My review of Rachel Trezise's wonderful short story collection Cosmic Latte can be listened to now, and for the next 6 days, at RTE's Arena site here. 45 minutes in. (God, I say 'sort of' a lot in the course of the review!! What's that all about?!)