My latest novel Once a Year is set in Castlehill Hotel & Spa, a riverside country house owned and run by the Sullivan family for generations. Traditionally, when the Christmas rush is over, the women of the family gather there for their annual weekend break. As the book’s shoutline says, “It’s the perfect family getaway, but the Sullivans are not a perfect family …”.
In the process of making a book, I can spend as much time on reading what I wrote yesterday as on choosing the next words to progress my story. But analysis in the course of creation differs from analytical reflection and, with Once a Year, I’ve found that re-reading can still be a useful exercise after a book has already appeared in bookshops.
The hotel gave me a memory-filled setting for my cast of three generations plus a reserved, observant stepdaughter. The weekend offered a tight timeline. The multigenerational dynamic allowed me to view the character’s storylines from different angles – their own perceptions; those of the others; and in terms of how each has perceived herself and her place and role in the family over time. And I had something else to provide a powerful extra dimension: the fact that the story takes place in winter.
Themes in Once a Year
Many novelists experience new awareness of their own work when asked to talk about it at events or in interviews. Recently, searching for answers to questions about the themes in Once a Year, I went back to drafts of my text and noticed how often descriptions of the seasonal landscape act as metaphors.
During the getaway weekend, the land surrounding Castlehill and its river is held in the grip of a misty Irish midlands’ winter. Physically or psychologically, each of the principal characters is metaphorically frozen, by fear, stubbornness, insecurity or – in the case of Nora, the family matriarch – by the increasing constraints of old age. Many of the book’s pivotal scenes take place out of doors, where winter is further reflected in images of dormancy or of potential held in suspension, and where grounds capable of producing food for the hotel’s kitchen are instead laid out as rigidly-controlled lawns.
The outside world is black, white and grey, and conversations there tend to be stilted. The hotel’s warm rooms are full of colour, and the spa’s spaces are designed to encourage relaxation, trust, and shared sensual experience, none of which come easily to Nora, her daughter Sheila, or to Sheila’s daughters Máire, Barbara and Henrietta. In rereading, I’ve realised the usefulness of this contrast which, though subliminal, played a central part in scene placement and character exposition.
I’ve also become more aware of how often images of winter signal transition and turning-points in the book’s plot. Here’s Henrietta’s stepdaughter, thirteen-year-old Jane, as they set out for Castlehill: – She didn’t find silence awkward, but Hen seemed to. So, as they bowled along country roads between winter-bleached hedges, she felt she’d better say something to fill the space.
‘Is there far to go?’
‘Are you tired?’
‘No.’
‘Hungry? We could stop for a bite.’
Jane shook her head. ‘I’m good. Unless you want something.’
‘No, I’m okay.’
That seemed to be that, so they stopped talking. And now, thought Jane, we’ve got an awkward silence, when what we had before was just a couple of people not talking.
More Winter Imagery
Here’s Barbara, whose fear of rejection could make her lose out on love:- The peat-brown water was in winter spate and clumps of broken reed and twigs, looking like banshees’ hair, streamed away from rocks and roots. On the path, the wind pushed her along, making her stride out and breathe deeply. At first, thinking of nothing she simply revelled in the cold air. Then crows flew up from a leafless tree, Luke stepped onto the path, and her heart seemed to leap straight to her throat.
Luke looks after Castlehill’s grounds: -. Snowdrops glimmered in the moonlight at the base of a sycamore. When he hunkered down, he could even see their spear-shaped leaves, dark green against the black roots that sheltered them, and when he touched one, its petals were cold as the iron stove indoors. They’ll come back year after year, he thought, but I won’t be here to see them. After what happened today, I don’t even know where I’m going to be in a few months’ time.
Máire, the eldest of Sheila’s daughters, who manages Castlehill, has been promoted way beyond her abilities by Nora:- I loved the first year of my marriage when we lived in our own home, where everything indoors was still chaotic but flowers we hadn’t known were there had begun to appear outside […] Dismally, Máire sat back and looked at the strip light above her desk, her imagination working overtime. If Raymond and I don’t get our act together soon, we’ll never go back there. We’ll live forever at Castlehill, where I don’t want to be, and I’ll be trapped in this job I should never have taken.
And here, in the final chapter, is Sheila, whose icy relationship with her mother is about to thaw, offering the whole family the prospect of a joyous future. :- It was a bright January morning with a sense of incipient spring. Cyclamen were flowering in the urns that flanked the doorway, and sunlight glinted on the tall windows […] Talk about a merry-go-round, thought Sheila. It’s not much more than an hour since I walked down these steps thinking I’d never go through that door again. Now I’m about to sweep in and make authoritative pronouncements, with nothing to back them up but a conviction that I’m right. A chattering group of guests emerged and flowed past on either side of her, exclaiming at the beauty of the morning. Lifting her chin at an angle that exactly matched her mother’s, Sheila put both hands on the revolving door and pushed.
(c) Felicity Hayes-McCoy
About Once a Year by Felicity Hayes-McCoy:
Now that she’s finally (and secretly) divorced her unreliable husband, Sheila is ready to celebrate. But is her family’s annual get-together, held at the hotel they’ve owned for generations, the best time to break the news?
And she’s not the only one keeping something to herself.
Nora, Sheila’s formidable mother, is distracted by her doubts about the Castlehill Hotel’s new manager: her grand-daughter Máire. Can she hide her feelings though, putting family before the business for once?
Meanwhile, Sheila’s three daughters each have a big decision to make: Henrietta needs time away from home to think, Máire is afraid of losing someone, and Barbara is eager to take a risk …
As the Sullivan women gather at a place filled with memories, bittersweet and painful truths come to the surface. Will honesty drive them further apart, or will they finally find themselves brought closer together?
Order your copy of Once a Year online here.
And read more from Felicity Hayes-McCoy on Writing.ie here.
