Sally Rooney is the latest in a long line of Irish women writers tackling weighty subjects – the difference now is that the world is finally taking them seriously
Grandmother did most of her work in bed. She had a special tray with folding legs that served as a desk. She would sit up against a stack of pillows, with a cashmere cardigan over her nightdress, and write longhand on loose sheets of foolscap. Pots of tea were ferried to her by my grandfather, who would have been fully dressed in a tweed jacket and tie and working from his study downstairs. All the men in my family had a study or office, and worked jobs with regular hours; unlike Grandmother, who would break off from her writing to dig in the garden or peel the spuds for dinner. I never remember, as a child, being told to shush because Grandmother was working. The only indication of her status as a writer was the piles of New Yorker magazines scattered around the house. She published 15 stories in the New Yorker between 1959 and 1976. Many years, this was her bread and butter.
Mary Lavin, or Grandmother (never Granny or Nana or, God forbid, Gran), made her name as a world-class short story writer from the unlikely setting of the Abbey Farm, near Navan, County Meath. The mother of three small children, she was widowed as a young woman, becoming a single mother and lone farmer in one fell swoop. While the male writers of her generation worked out of sight in holy sanctity, Grandmother took up a table in Bewley’s cafe on Grafton Street and wrote there until my mother and aunts joined her from school. In the evenings, the men gathered in the pubs around Baggot Street, while Grandmother cooked spaghetti bolognese and held court at her mews in nearby Lad Lane. If she broke the mould, it was for the simple reason that there was no other way for her to write and meet her peers. She had young children at home. Needs must.
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