Andrew Cunning, a writer and teacher from the north coast of Ireland, on the inspiration for and the fascinating background to his debut novel, Clara and Christina.
Sometimes writers talk about their novels in ways I find hard to believe. Hilary Mantel said her books were directed by the dead, Toni Morrison talked about reviving ghosts and the work rememory in her writing, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was, she claimed, the result of a vision. Talking in these terms was self-mythologising, I thought: an easy way to elevate the writing of a book beyond the mundane and daily search for passable syntax and believable character.
I take it all back.
On a Saturday morning in 2024, maybe February, maybe March, I found myself watching an interview with AS Byatt, the Booker Prize winning author of Possession. In the interview she covered a lot of ground, from feminism to academia, the work of memory to campus novels. I found her compelling. She spoke with ease across such a range of ideas and her eyes seemed to light up when she was asked a good question. I left my flat that morning with a head full of ideas and possible connections and headed down the Ormeau Road with the intention of writing the beginnings of an essay on Byatt. The essay did not materialise that day.
My turn to self-mythologise
And now it’s my turn to self-mythologise.
I was approaching the glass doors of a coffee shop, listening to Joni Mitchell’s Turbulent Indigo, when I heard a distinct voice in my head.
There is nothing more ill-advised than a thirty-year old with a memoir.
It came, seemingly, from nowhere, in an English accent and with an implied half-smile.
It made me laugh.
Who said it?
Already, instantly it seemed, I knew she was an author. She’d won prizes for her early books, she’d been celebrated across university campuses, she was a contemporary of Byatt. Her name was Christina. She loved Iris Murdoch. She had silvery blonde hair and hadn’t published a book in a decade. She was, for some reason, living in Belfast, a hundred yards from where I was standing. I looked across the road and could see her house from where I was standing.
Clara and Christina
Exactly how these details assembled themselves in the time it took to push open a door I will never know. Christina Darnell arrived to me. I did not invent her. And, for the year of writing Clara and Christina, she really did exist. She really did live on South Parade and she really was writing her final novel.
Inside, I was impatient in the queue and, by the time I had a filter coffee in my hands, the first section of the novel had been written in my head. I sat at a table, Joni still singing about oil spills and last chances, and transcribed exactly what I had overheard. And what was written in about twenty minutes that first day has remained largely unchanged. It forms the first chapter of Clara and Christina.
Marilynne Robinson
Years before I began writing the novel, I completed a PhD on the work of American novelist and essayist, Marilynne Robinson. I have been obsessed with her writing since I was fifteen and was handed Gilead by a friend in Science class as he thought I would ‘appreciate the God stuff.’ He was right, and I went on to write a book on Marilynne Robinson, perhaps the first book-length monograph on her work. As part of the research, I asked Marilynne Robinson’s agent, Ellen Levine, if I could have an hour with Marilynne for an interview. I thought nothing of the email and assumed it would be ignored.
A fortnight later, I was booking flights and a hotel and preparing interview questions on my knee on a flight to Iowa City.
I tell you this to give some background to Clara Wilson, the other eponymous character in my novel. You see, aside from the scant biographical details I listed above, I knew very little about Christina Darnell. In fact, it felt like I couldn’t know anything else about her, as though she were hidden from view (Darnell actually means hidden). Clara arrived to me as an energetic young academic keen to make a name for herself in the study of a celebrated writer, searching for the details I couldn’t find about Christina Darnell. Clara, like me, sends an email to her writer’s agent and is, just like I was, surprised to find herself granted access to the woman who has sat in the centre of her thinking for many years.
A deepening relationship
The book explores the deepening relationship between the two women, one at the outset of a career, the other at the very end. Clara seeks the woman behind the fiction, asking questions about Christina’s childhood, her time between novels. What she gets is something else entirely. I won’t ruin it now, though I’m not sure I could give it away in a sentence, anyway.
In writing the novel, I became aware that my characters were smarter and wiser than I am. What a strange thing that is to experience! I found myself writing things I did not know I knew, reflecting deeply on ideas and positions I had scarcely thought of before. But Christina knew all about them and felt really quite passionately about the whole thing.
So, there she was, speaking at an imaginary coffee table in my head for a year.
All I had to do was transcribe.
To me, Christina Darnell really did exist.
It just happened to be in fiction.
(c) Andrew Cunning
https://www.andrewcunning.co.uk
About Clara and Christina:
Two women meet in an unassuming coffee shop in Belfast; they seem an unlikely pair. Clara is young, inquisitive, optimistic for what the meeting holds. Christina is older, in her seventies, still glamorous, still quick. She is working on her fifth novel but no one yet knows of its existence. Clara is there to interview Christina, for her own book, anticipating some major scoop on this reclusive novelist. She wants to unearth the truth behind the fiction. But Christina has a different lesson in store for Clara.
Over a few months, a relationship forms between these two women who live their lives in books. Clara, writing her first, embraces this opportunity to learn from a writer finishing her last. During this time, Clara, face to face with her hero, begins to question her own convictions ultimately asking herself: what if there is nothing but fiction?
‘An absolute delight, full of warmth and human surprise’ Louise Nealon, author of Snowflake.
‘An exquisitely written novel . . . full of big ideas, quietly and carefully explored’ Jan Carson, author of The Firestarters.
Order your copy online here.
And read more Meet the Author articles on Writing.ie here.
