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How to pronounce Emma Donoghue: don-a-hue
Born in Dublin, Ireland, in October 1969, Emma Donoghue is the youngest of eight children of Frances and Denis Donoghue (the literary critic). She attended Catholic convent schools in Dublin, apart from one eye-opening year in New York at the age of ten. In 1990 she earned a first-class honours BA in English and French from University College Dublin (unfortunately, without learning to actually speak French). She moved to England, and in 1997 received her PhD (on the concept of friendship between men and women in eighteenth-century English fiction) from the University of Cambridge. From the age of 23, she has earned her living as a writer, and has been lucky enough to never have an 'honest job' since she was sacked after a single summer month as a chambermaid. After years of commuting between England, Ireland, and Canada, in 1998 she settled in London, Ontario, where she lives with her partner Chris Roulston and their son Finn (15) and daughter Una (11).
Donoghue is best known for her fiction, which has been translated into over forty languages. Her novels for adults include Slammerkin (2001), Landing (2007), The Sealed Letter (2008), Room (2010), Frog Music (2014), The Wonder (2016), and Akin (2019). She has also published four collections of short stories, several plays and screenplays, and a series for middle-grade readers called The Lotterys (2017-2018).
Emma Donoghue's website
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Jack is such a unique narrator. At what point did you decide to tell the story from his perspective?
I never considered any other perspective: letting Jack tell this story was
my idea in a nutshell. I hoped having a small child narrator would make
such a horrifying premise original, involving, but also more bearable:
his innocence would at least partly shield readers on their descent into
the abyss. I also knew that Jack would have some interesting things to
say about our world, as a newcomer to it; the book's satire of modern
mores and media, and interrogations of the nature of reality, grew out
of Jack's perspective rather than being part of my initial plan. I did have
some technical worries about having such a young narrator: I knew the
prospect of being stuck in a little kid's head might turn some readers off.
But I never feared that Jack would be unable to tell the whole story.
How did you manage to get so thoroughly into the mind-set of a
five-year-old boy?
It was a help that my own son was five, but it's not like Finn and Jack
have much in common: Finn has been as shaped by sociability and
freedom as Jack has by routine and one-to-one time with his mother.
I tried to isolate ...
David Almond, in his own words:
I was born in Newcastle and I grew up in a big Catholic family in
Felling-on-Tyne. I had four sisters and a brother and lots of relatives in the
streets nearby. My dad had been in Burma ...
(more)
If you enjoyed:
Room
Try:
The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean
by David Almond
Clare Beams is the author of the story collection We Show What We Have Learned, which won the Bard Prize and was a Kirkus Best Debut of 2016, as well as a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the New York Public ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Wonder
Try:
The Illness Lesson
by Clare Beams
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