Author Patrick Holloway on the writing of his new novel, The Language of Remembering.
I lived my first few years in England and when I moved to Crosshaven at the age of six, on my first day in primary school I was told I spoke funny. I found it hard to say Munster without thinking of something hiding under my bed. Had to practice over and over to say Yo-ghurt instead of Yaw-ghurt. Looking back now, after writing a whole novel that is set around language and identity, I suppose it all started there.
When I moved to Brazil in 2011, I didn’t have a word of Portuguese. I thought I’d pick it up in no time, instead it was an arduous, lonely couple of years of being on the outside, and feeling like nobody really knew me. When I started my PhD in Portuguese in 2013 at PUCRS, a leading university in the south of Brazil, I was quiet, would never raise my hand, would walk from classroom to classroom, pretending to be listening to music, or on the phone. It was the first time in my life I experienced this. As a complete extrovert, who hates his own company, this only made me feel more lost. When Cíntia first met my classmates, they told her how shy I was, how quiet. She looked at me in disbelief.
It was then I started to really think about language and identity and would go on to write my thesis on this topic. I started exploring it in my own fiction. I thought of all the way language shows the world who we are, how it is insufficient, how often it fails us. I wondered what would happen to an identity if language was simply taken away. That is when I started a short story about a son who tries to connect with his mother who has early onset Alzheimer’s. She has started speaking only Irish, the language of her youth and he takes Irish classes to connect with her again. This story went on to win The Bath Short Story Prize, but by that point I was already writing more. His voice never left me.
I was heavily influenced by Paul Ricouer during my PhD, and he writes about selfhood (ipse) and sameness (idem). I started to contemplate this in relation to my character, Oisin, who in the book returns to Ireland after years in Brazil to take care of his mum. I thought of all the other themes that play into an identity, principally, culture, memory, and trauma. This really grounded Oisin as a character and what I wanted to explore in his return to Ireland—the connection with his past, the remembering of trauma, and the learning to move forward.
I also started writing Brigid, his mother, but when she was pregnant with him. This was more to explore her character and understand her more for the scenes when she is older, but I soon fell hard for her story as a teenager—pregnant out of wedlock in early 80s rural Ireland, the barriers she faced, and how she is faced with a new future, a new identity she had never imagined.
This is when the book started to take structure. I knew that each chapter would alternate. Oisin returns to Ireland with his wife and young child, desperate to be there for his mother and also determined to fit back in. Past traumas and memories of who he once was are constantly brining him back to the past so he is unable to move on in the present. Brigid faces a life she is not prepared for and in doing so has to shed a life she thought she would live. As a pregnant teenager she faces contempt and disdain from everyone she thought she knew. Her own mother, Kathleen, becomes her biggest confidant as she battles with her own identity and fears of what is in store for her once the baby comes, her mother is there every step of the way and tells her: ‘if you’re tough through it, if you’re tenacious, if you can just rise above it, then once all this is done, the essence of who you are won’t have changed.’
Oisin worries how he will fit back into a life he abandoned, but also how his Brazilian wife and child will adapt to Irish life. As much as he tries to be present for them, he is constantly reminded of his past and is stuck between who he was and who he could be. Brigid, by accepting her choice, pushes herself to the limits and finds a side to herself she didn’t know was there.
The Language of Remembering is a novel that explores the ways memories can construe an identity and what it means to call a place a home. Brigid and Oisin embark on a journey of personal discovery, and as past traumas are exposed, they begin to understand what has shaped them and who they really are. The Language of Remembering asks how we connect to the people we love and how we move on from the past to find meaning in the present.
(c) Patrick Holloway
Author photography (c) Dave Murphy
About The Language of Remembering by Patrick Holloway:
Returning from Brazil with his wife and daughter, Oisín is looking to rebuild a life in Ireland and reconnect with his mother, Brigid, who has early onset Alzheimer’s. As her condition deteriorates she starts to speak Irish, the language of her youth, and reflect on her childhood dreams and aspirations.
Mother and son embark on a journey of personal discovery, and as past traumas are exposed they begin to understand what has shaped them and who they really are.
The Language of Remembering asks how we connect to the people we love and how we move on from the past to find meaning in the present.
Order your copy of The Language of Remembering by Patrick Holloway online here.
And see here for some writing tips from Patrick Holloway on Writing.ie.
