The historians may note the
important dates and times, but it is the artists who mark the progress of a
society. As western consumerism conquers the world, Andrew Hamilton talks
shopping centres with Costa Prize winner and Booker Prize long-listed author,
Catherina O’Flynn.
DEBUT novels, like debut
albums, are like mini declarations of independence. A platform for bold
statements, for purging years or even decades of formative creative energy - a
time to give two fingers to the world and shout, “I’m here, I’m me, now get
used to it.”
So it’s only natural that for
many authors, the object of their first creative affection is themselves. It’s
a natural condition; the creative compass must first point inwards and explore
the interior uncharted before taking leave to wander and explore.
For Catherine O’Flynn, that
first inwards look means 1980’s Birmingham, the death rattle of the factories,
the slow rise of Thatcher, the strange and sometimes dark setting for her debut
novel, What Was Lost
An Irish name in a city of
Irish names, Birmingham in the ‘80s seethed unemployment, with the immigrant
workers always the first in line for the chop.
But the universe abhors a
vacuum so, with every destruction, a regeneration inevitably follow. This spark
or creation came in the form of the giant shopping centres, sparkling sentries
to herald the coming of the
age of consumerism.
“When I first started writing
the novel, I wasn’t necessarily thinking that I was writing a novel. I was
working in a shopping centre and I started taking notes there about the things
around me, so when I started writing, I guess I wasn’t trying to frame it in
any literary tradition, I was just trying to write about my own experiences,”
said Catherine.
“After a while, it developed
into a much more fictional thing, so I suppose I was never really aware of it in an objective way, or placing it
within any tradition.
“It was never really my
intention to play the old ways off against the new. I was growing up in the
‘80s and it just felt natural to include some of these things. I tried to avoid
having rose-tinted spectacles about the past, but there was something that I
wanted to say about these huge shopping centres and the impact they’ve had on
lives and on the landscape. But at the same time, I didn’t want to idealise the
idea of the local shops, because some local shops are rubbish.
“What really started me off
writing the book was working in a shopping centre and seeing how many people
seemed totally lost there. People came thinking they were going to find
something but they just seemed to hang out for an inordinate amount of time,
hoping that whatever it was would appear. I was never really quite sure what
they were looking for, but I’m pretty confident nobody ever found it there.”
The story opens with
eight-year-old Kate who, along with her pet stuffed monkey Mickey, has set up
the detective agency Falcon Investigations. Like so much of life in the
changing city, the newly built Green Oak Shopping Centre is the main focus of
interest and investigation.
“I really wanted to have a
child character in the book. I think that one of the things that get lost along
the way is that sense of direction that we all have as children. So I wanted to
contrast Kate with some of the adults who seem to all have completely insipid
lives,” continues Catherine.
“I really wanted to make her
as three-dimensional as I could. When you read books with children in them,
especially crime books, the children are mostly just victims or symbols of
innocence and don’t have any real personalities of their own.
“I thought it would nice to
make Kate as vivid as I could and make her into someone who would really be
missed when she got lost. There is a lot of humour in her, in the way she takes
herself so seriously. I remember how earnestly I took playing at being a
detective when I was young. I was never as organised or dedicated as Kate but
you can enter this world of your own and see everything through that prism. I
think there is a lot of humour in that.”
Kate’s investigations finally
get her into trouble and, without a trace, she vanishes. Time passes without a clue
or a suspect, but even 20 years later it’s still clear that the fate of Kate
and the Green Oaks Centre are somehow inexplicably linked.
“When I was writing it, the
story really grew from the shopping centre. The centre itself was the main character
in a lot of ways. And those voices, the extracts from the random customers —
were really a way of giving the shopping centre some sort of personality, a way
of giving it its own identity. I guess that each of those voices is another layer
of what, or maybe who, the shopping centre really is,” continues Catherine.
Catherine, like most of the
characters in her book, is of Irish descent.
Her ties stretch back through
her father to Carrick-on-Shannon in
Leitrim and to Lahinch, where
she spent many summers with her uncle,
famed local school teacher
Barney O’Higgins.
“In lots of ways, for me it’s
always been Lahinch that I associate as our home in Ireland,” she said.
“We would always go back
there when we were on holidays, back to
Lahinch and Ennistymon, so I
actually had very close ties there when I was younger. It was always a home away
from home for me.”
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