Connect with us
Roisin Meaney at Gallaghers Roisin Meaney at Gallaghers

art

Limerick Author Roisin Meaney’s New Book

Published

on

 

 

 

Limerick author Roisin Meaney has just published her ninth novel, inspired by her mother’s chance pen-pal relationship with another woman she never met. Listowel born Roisin, who previously worked as a primary school teacher in Ireland and Zimbabwe, before turning her hand to writing with her first novel, The Daisy Picker, which won a two-book deal with Tivoli in 2004. In the nine years since her pen has barely left the page, with nine adult novels and two children’s books on her mantelpiece. Her latest novel, Something in Common, which has now hit the shelves in Limerick, is a break from the norm in that in focuses on just two main characters. When her mother was forced to give her teaching job due to the marriage ban, she took issue with something another woman wrote about the profession in a newspaper article. She put pen to paper, and both women ended up maintaining a correspondence for several years, although they never met, despite the fact that both of them lived in Ireland, albeit in different counties. “Some years after they stopped corresponding, my father saw the other woman’s death notice in the paper. I was always fascinated by this relationship – I remember the letters arriving, and all of us reading about this woman whom we felt we knew. I used this idea, penfriends who never meet up, as the basis for Something in Common,” Roisin tells me. Four of her novels have made the top five in the Irish bestseller list, with one (The Last Week of May) going all the way to the top and another (The People Next Door) reaching number two. To date her writing has been translated into German, Spanish, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian, and her first Italian offering is on the way. Congratulations Roisin!


advertisement




advertisement




advertisement




advertisement




advertisement



Text by Anne Sheridan

 

 

 

Richard is a presenter, producer, songwriter and actor. He was named the Limerick Person of the Year (2011) and won an online award at the Metro Éireann Media and Multicultural Awards (2011) for promoting multi-culturalism online. Richard says that the ilovelimerick.com concept is very much a community driven project that aims to document life in Limerick. So, that in 20 years time people can look back and remember the events that were making the headlines.

Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.