Foley, who had been celebrating his 34th birthday on that night, had denied the charge. He had told gardaí he had “found your wan” after he had gone to relieve himself near the skip at 3.50am. However CCTV footage showed him carrying her to the skip area. It also emerged he had met her earlier in the night club and she had become ill and quickly incapacitated after he bought her a Black Russian to drink. He had insisted on walking her home, against her wishes.

These fifty men- a support club- took their seats and the judge entered. To this gallery, this audience,  the brave woman who took the case read her victim impact statement with quiet dignity. Before he passed the sentence, Judge Donogh McDonogh criticised the character statement made by Castlegregory parish priest Fr Seán Sheehy. The priest had said Foley was always “respectful of women”

Foley’s actions “gave the lie” to Fr Sheehy’s statement, the judge said.

So surely did Foley’s reference to the woman- well known to him- as  “your wan”.  Speaking on Newstalk this morning, Fr Sheehy further defended his handshake and support of Foley:

“My Christian responsibility was to this person that I knew and to the person who is the object of, what I call, this extremely harsh sentence.”

When Fr. Sheehy went on to call him the alleged attacker, he was reminded that the man has been found guilty under the law. This priest and these fifty men- in the court reporter words ’a procession’, shows that the Catholic Church has formed the backbone our patriarchal society and continues to support sexual violence and atrocities against women and children to this very day.

From the same Newstalk broadcast, Director of the Rape Crisis Centre in Kerry Vera O’ Leary said what happened in court, was devastating for the victim in this case.

“To have to sit there – knowing what she went through, knowing that she did tell the truth – and it took a huge amount of courage…for her to come forward and to report” she said. “And for then to see people actually from the locality, actually going up and shaking his hand.”

Instead of buying a superfluous gift for someone today, I will make a donation to this organisation, who stood by this brave woman:

All donations are gratefully received and may be donated using the following methods: Cheques, Bank Drafts posted to Kerry Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre,  5 Greenview Terrace, Tralee. Co. Kerry. Direct Debit or lodged to our Bank Account Allied Irish Bank • Denny Street • Tralee • Co.Kerry Account No: 62512100 Branch Code 93-63-91

Meanwhile there’s an important conference coming up on 16th of January hosted by Dublin Rape Crisis Centre and the School of Law, Trinity College  Rape Law: Victims on Trial.

Related posts:

1. Is anyone paying attention?
2. Get your slut on
3. Too gay to judge

What has this got to do with a lesbian blog you may well ask… and you’re right, ‘lesbian’ doesn’t even appear in the index! But I’d hazard a guess that as lesbians (and especially through puberty and the teenage years) many of us have fairly complex journeys with our bodies and the  tyrannies of an increasingly narrow beauty aesthetic for women – one that often bears little or no relation to women we find desirable or indeed any connection with our own bodies, desires and appetites.  Some studies (like this recent Australian one) have shown that, in general, lesbians have a healthier body image than heterosexual or bisexual women.  But even the language of such surveys shows we are not immune –  note it’s that we are, sadly,  ‘less dissatisfied’ rather than more delighted with our bodies… !

This series of essays by Orbach is very readable, analytical but not particularly academic.  It is very much in this cultural moment – so plenty of statistics about the (rapacious!) diet industry, plastic surgery trends and references to our reinvented  bodies in ‘second life’ .  She is fairly scathing about the so-called ‘obesity epidemic’, she sees BMI measurements as utterly fabricated, and offers the alarming fact that in the US there is almost as much spent on diet products as education!

“Diet companies rely on a 95 per cent recidivism rate, a figure that should be etched into every dieter’s consciousness.”

Indeed she threatened to sue Weight Watchers for false advertising..!  She  also presents an interesting statistic that low maternal weight (the newly-coined ‘pregnorexia’, fuelled by celebrity culture) is a trigger for infants to become overweight as adults, priming the infant to ‘act like a famine victim’. She notes that body hatred is one of the West’s hidden exports- citing a shocking statistic that 50% of Korean girls seek a ‘westernising ‘eye procedure.

“Celebrity culture has brought us an invidious version of sharing. By creating internationally recognisable iconic figures, it appears to be inclusive and democratic. In reality the visual nature of our world sucks out variety and replaces it with a vision that is narrow and limited as far as age, body type and ethnicity are concerned. The sexualisation of our children’s world is caught up in a consumerism and a false erotic, leaving them confused about the sexual as they are about where their bodies and their body-based needs begin and end.”

Orbach notes that the idealised female body has almost yearly modifications- increasingly taller, bigger-breasted- every modification rendering it more precarious, and of course less attainable. And this whole notion of ‘attaining’ the perfect body, whether buying it through bogus wonder-drugs, a surgeon’s hands or the middle-class obsession with body-sculpting in gyms,  comes under scrutiny.  On a personal note, my half-sister who is six foot tall was offered drugs (which she refused) during her pregnancy to ensure that her daughters would be of a more ‘normal’ height… how times have changed,  a six foot woman is now considered a super model!

Drawing very directly from her work as a therapist, Orbach explores the ‘hated body’ through various case studies- and, in deeply psychotherapeutic fashion, puts a lot of store in experiences of food, touch and safety in infancy.   There’s nothing shockingly new in this book, but it’s timely, stimulating and necessary to remind ourselves of these issues.  Her aim makes utter sense to any of us who want to enjoy diversity in our bodies and those we love:

“Our struggle is to recorporealise our bodies so they become a place we live from rather than an aspiration always needing to be achieved.”

Related posts:

1. Review: Sing You Home

This is the point where I lament that Dublin’s lesbian-run  Anthology Books closed in 2007. Physiotherapy or whatever is happening on the Meeting House Square site may be good for the  body, but that  bookshop with its eclectic stock, erudite staff and free events was excellent  for the fabric of the city itself. I felt proud that every tourist that who wandered in would fail to find that Little Book of Auld Blather and instead see books by Emma Donoghue, Michael Cunningham, Judith Butler, Jeanette Winterson; instead of fatuous photography books of the Emerald Isle they’d encounter Annie Liebovitz,  Robert Mapplethorpe, Del La Grace, Keith Harring…  and have their presumptions of  Catholic Oireland deftly usurped! And before Temple Bar was Temple Bar, there was WellRed Books,  a radical/feminist bookshop on Crow Street, which stocked all the UK feminist presses- Virago, Women’s Press, Onlywomen Press, and Irish feminist  publishers Attic Press, Arlen House and Spellbound feminist postcards- you could have your fill then pop in to the WellFed Vegetarian cafe and eat as many kidney beans and pasta bakes as you fancied!

So here’s what we found in New York’s Bluestocking Books,  a feminist bookshop nestled beside a vegan restaurant in East Village. Though only 10 years old, on first impression the shop seems  a little anachronistic- a throwback to 1970s and 1980s activism- plenty of A5 stapled-bound Marxist/gender politics pamphlets, button badges, and slogan tshirts on the wall.  A coffee dock with every flavour of herbal tea, but only organic fairly-traded soya milk on hand for the coffee… I’m not complaining! In another corner a collection of ‘alternative menstrual products’, reusable silicone devices, mooncups, sea sponges, these probably require a separate article on their merits or demerits- any takers?!

Anyhow… onto the books, and they stock a plentitude! The shop carries a very specific selection of fiction, plenty of  well-known  lgbt novels from The Well of Loneliness to Stone Butch Blues, recent books by  literary feminists like Margaret Atwood and Lorrie Moore (presumably they have a cohort of loyal customers who come here rather than Barnes and Noble for the more mainstream books- or let’s hope so, otherwise I’ve no idea how they make it work financially!). They carry a broad range of non-fiction – entire bays of sexual politics, violence against women,  health, ecology/sustainable living, vegan/vegetarian cookbooks.  In their own words:

We carry over 6000 titles on topics such as queer and gender studies, global capitalism, feminism, police and prisons, democracy studies, and black liberation. You can also find some good ‘ole smutty fiction. We also carry magazines, zines, journals, alternative menstrual products and other oddly hard-to-find good things.

Here’s a random sample of three books to give you a flavour of just how eclectic their stock is:

The Cunt Coloring Book by  lesbian artist/activist Tee Corinne (1943-2006)-first published in the mid 1970s is exactly what it says on the labia – I mean label!,  a book of 25 line drawings to celebrate female sexuality.. and to fling off any shame for a generation who referred to mysterious  vaginas as ‘down there’.  It’s more matter-of-fact than beautiful or erotic, but then I guess they need to be coloured in with great attention to the unique nature of each one… lesbian homework!

The Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy for Lesbians – How to Stay Sane and Care for Yourself from Preconception Through Birth by Rachel Pepper seems full of useful information and advice, but the legal/rights chapter and other resources would obviously be very US-centred.

Lois Lenz, Lesbian Secretary a racy novel by Monica Nolan featuring  the eponymous  Lois Lenz, who was like any other wholesome, former cheerleader with a knack for office skills. According to the blurb: Her soul was pure. Her Desires were sinful. Her typing was impeccable.

Bluestockings don’t currently offer a mail order service, but if you find yourself in New York, go find the shop and shelter from the rain in the company of fine books and coffee for several hours…They also host lots of  free events - readings, launches, meetings. We missed a trans poetry slam the night before…

Bluestockings
Open Every Day
11am – 11pm

Can we have a bookshop like this in Dublin again soon please?

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We have a number of shows in our festival that we think would appeal to a general gay and lesbian audience…

These range across the spectrum of our genres, but the especially fantastic Spiegeltent nights include Camille O’Sullivan (David Bowie, Nick Cave and Jacques Brel covers, who has a huge gay following and which is selling out fast), Nico Muhly, the beautiful camp contemporary composer who scored The Reader and who’s worked with Anthony and the Johnsons, Bjork and Rufus Wainwright, and Synth Eastwood Has You Surrounded, a music and visual art extravaganza from the Synth Eastwood boys.

SHOW: Camille O’Sullivan

TEN WORD PITCH: When she sings it’s as though her breath is soaked in paraffin; one spark, and the whole room would ignite.

VENUE: Spiegeltent

TIME: Doors 9.30pm

DATE Wed 16th

TICKET PRICE: €26.50

SHOW: Nico Muhly

COMPANY: Presented by Absolut Fringe

TEN WORD PITCH: This 20-something modern classical composer’s first Irish gig.

VENUE: Spiegeltent

TIME: 8.00pm (doors open 7.30pm)

DATE: Sun 6th

TICKET PRICE: €25

SHOW: Synth Eastwood Has You Surrounded

TEN WORD PITCH: This music/visueal art night promises to take the tent into the beyond… maybe even beyonder.

VENUE: Spiegeltent

TIME: Doors 9.30pm

DATE: Thurs 10th

TICKET PRICE: €15

And then of course there’s La Clique (and La Clique Up Late, a new cheekier late night show). David O’Mer is back with his bathtub (and rubber ducky) along with the muscled and patriotically undergarmented English Gents, and this year they’re joined by Le Gateaux Chocolat, an opera singer with a penchant for lycra and laughter, the fiery and curvaceous Marawa, demon on the hula-hoop and arialist drag queen Lloyd aka Hymen. Plus lots and lots more, with the ABSOLUT FRINGE bars open ’til late!

SHOW: La Clique

VENUE: Spiegeltent

TIME: Doors 6:30pm (Mon-Sat)& Doors 9:30pm on Fri & Sat. Doors 5:30pm only on Sun 20th

DATES: 8th-20th (Excluding Sun 13th; Two shows on Fridays & Saturdays)

TICKET PRICE: €34.50/€36.50 on Fridays & Saturdays

Perhaps most excitingly, we’ve come up with an all new way for everyone to participate in the festival with our Fringe Clubs. There’s the awsome Dance Club headed by David Bolger of Cois Ceim, where he’ll choreograph a routine with you, absolutely all experience levels welcome! Will St. Leger takes the helm of our Street Art Club up at the Bernard Shaw, so get ready to get messy with spray paint and stencil art! All of our clubs have an extremely limited capacity and include a “field trip” to another ABSOLUT FRINGE show so be sure to book straight away!

SHOW: Street Art Club

COMPANY: Absolut Fringe & Will St. Leger

TEN WORD PITCH: Indulge your latent creativity in an accessible and fun way!

VENUE: Bernard Shaw

FIELD TRIP: Mind The Gap Thurs 17th

DATES: Wed 9th 7-9pm, Sun 13th, Wed 16th, Sun 20th 2-4pm

TICKET PRICE: €30

SHOW: Dance Club

COMPANY: Absolut Fringe & David Bolger

TEN WORD PITCH: Indulge your latent creativity in an accessible and fun way!

VENUE: The Lab

FIELD TRIP: Aerowaves Sun 13th

DATES: Sat 5th, 12th & 19th 4-6pm, Wed 9th & 16th 7-9pm,

TICKET PRICE: €30

Theatre-wise at the Fringe we’ve got more site-specific stuff than ever before! See new work in new venues, like a van or a bush in Merrion Square. And in a shop front on Crane Lane, sandwiched between the Boilerhouse and Stringfellows, Madam Butterfly presents her women only show. Men can watch, but only through the window. Una McKevitt revamps her Victor and Gord for ABSOLUT FRINGE with a brand new relationship addition. Happy and sad and profound yet low key all at the same time.

The Crown Jewels is a workshop production all around Dublin Castle from Belfast Company lalanoo about royal family homosexuality scandals (ooh-arr).

SHOW: Madame Butterfly

COMPANY: Aideen McDonald

TEN WORD PITCH: Ladies, welcome to an intimate audience at Madame Butterfly’s poetry boudoir.

VENUE: No. 5 Crane Lane

TIME: 9pm & 10pm, plus 8pm on 18th & 19th

DATES: Fri 11th – Sat 19th, excl. Tues 15

TICKET PRICE: €15

SHOW: Victor and Gord Cubed

COMPANY: Una McKevitt

TEN WORD PITCH: Friends and Family. You can leave them. They never leave you.

VENUE: Project Arts Centre Cube

TIME: 6.30pm

DATES: Thurs 10th – Sat 12th

MATINEE DATES: 12:00:00 AM

MATINEE TIMES: 12:00:00 AM

TICKET PRICE: €15/12 (for every show)

SHOW: The Crown Jewels: a workshop production

COMPANY: la la noo

TEN WORD PITCH: A shocking crime remains unsolved. Why? Why else? Sex and politics.

VENUE: Dublin Castle, the entrance to the State Apartments

TIME: 11.30am

DATES: Sat 12th & Sun 13th

TICKET PRICE: €6

Pantibar hosts the always fantastic and hilarious ponydance with their new show Where Did It All Go Right? It’s a comedy dance show, and every member of the cast is a stunner (and they usually wear skimpy, skimpy shorts). And speaking of hot dancer types, Your Letter, At Last! showcases Guillaume Pige’s poetic form of physical theatre (awfully easy on the eye). Finally, perhaps the most bonkers show of all features Mamoro Iriguchi, pregnant with rabbits. Plus, it’s double billed with a concert by experimental musicians Origamibiro and the bar in the Project Arts Centre will be open throughout it. Brilliant night out guaranteed!

SHOW: Where Did It All Go Right?

COMPANY: ponydance

TEN WORD PITCH: We’re here for a good time, not a long time.

VENUE: Downstairs @ Panti Bar, Capel St.

TIME: 6.00pm

DATES: 7th-20th (exclu. Mon 14th)

PREVIEW: Sun 6th

TICKET PRICE: €12/10/8

SHOW: Your Letter, At Last!

COMPANY: Théâtre -Re- & Ciarán O’Melia

TEN WORD PITCH: Two photos of you, inexhaustible something, Your Letter, at Last!

VENUE: Smock 1

TIME: 6.30pm

DATES: 16th – 20th

PREVIEW: Tue 15th

TICKET PRICE: €15/12/10

SHOW: Pregnant?!

COMPANY: Mamoru Iriguchi

TEN WORD PITCH: Bonkers Multi-media show delivered by a pseudo-pregnant (with bunnies) male.

VENUE: Project Arts Centre Space Upstairs

TIME: 9pm

DATES: Thur 17th-Sat 19th

TICKET PRICE: €22/20

You can download the full programme and/or book ticket on www.fringefest.com or call the box office on 1850 FRINGE (1850 374643)

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Ground-breaking UK-based company DV8 present their provocative physical theatre production, To Be Straight With You. Artistic Director Lloyd Newson leads a multi-ethnic cast in an unflinching exploration of tolerance, intolerance, religion and sexuality incorporating dance, text, documentary, animation and film.  Newson was partly inspired by personal experience..

In the early 1990s, I went on a Gay Pride March which that year went through the predominantly Afro-Caribbean neighbourhood of Brixton. My then-boyfriend, who was Indian, and I were astonished at the level of abuse and hostility directed at us as we walked hand in hand down Brixton Road. I was struck by the fact that people who themselves are part of a minority, many of whom must have experienced racism and racist abuse first hand, were so willing to be abusive towards another minority. Our research showed that many people within the Afro-Caribbean community hold strong religious beliefs, and not surprisingly, use religious texts to justify their negative attitudes towards homosexuality.

This quote from the ever-reliable Lyn Gardner in The Guardian suggests that DV8′s performance is definitely a timely peice of programming for Irish audiences:

Newson is drawing on the fact that 85 countries around the world still criminalise same-sex relationships, and in seven, the death penalty exists for consensual sexual acts between adults of the same gender. This homophobia is frequently linked to religious beliefs, particularly the more extreme ends of Islam and Christianity. But the most shocking thing about To Be Straight With You is that many of the personal stories it tells belong to people living in secular Britain – where the veneer of tolerance turns out to be a thin one, and the respect accorded to some minorities is not always reciprocated when it comes to homosexuality. It is a situation that has led Peter Tatchell to suggest that “in the name of ‘unity’ against Islamopobia and racism, much of the left tolerates misogyny and homophobia in minority communities”.

Great to see another outing for  Brokentalkers moving song-cycle Silver Stars (especially if -like me!-you missed it the frst time around!) Based on celebrated singer/songwriter Seán Millar’s interviews, the performance features a community chorus of old and not-so-old gay men, telling through their own words their stories of searching for happiness and fulfilment in a country that was challenged by their very existence.

And our magnificant (and ubiquitous!) Panti is presenting her new work A Woman in Progress..billed as stand-up (!) she traces her journey from small-town boy kicking against the uptight traditions of rural Ireland – to towering Goddess in wigs and false lashes.

The world premiere of The Birds by Conor McPherson is at the Gate Theatre, adapted from the short story by Daphne Du Maurier (and immortalised by Alfred Hitchcock),  Sinéad Cusack and Ciarán Hinds star.  I can’t wait to see how they achieve the creepy tale on stage.. And Du Maurier (1907-1987) is a fascinating writer and bisexual, as if you needed another incentive to go along!

Two other major performances to catch are  Declan Donnellan’s  poetic version of Chekhov’s Three Sisters which features many of Russia’s leading stage and screen actors.. so be warned, in Russian with surtitles! And Québecois director, actor and storyteller Robert Lepage’s The Blue Dragon. Two of the most innovative independent Irish companies are in this year also… Pan Pan present The Crumb Trail by Gina Moxley – Hansel and Gretel reset in the forest of internet age, with young people groping for survival in a dark world of technology and greed; and The Corn Exchange premiere Freefall by Michael West.

There’s about 25 other shows that I haven’t mentioned and booking opens on August 19th...! Priority booking is available for Friends of the Festival at the moment- there’s a good looking offer for Student Friends for any of our fresh-faced Gaelick readers!

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My legal-eagle colleagues will eloquently refute her prejudiced and disingenuous remarks in relation to marriage. I’m particularly incensed by her slur on LGBT families. How can she dare to suggest that being brought up in what she calls “an outwardly unconventional home” damages children and their “prospects for a rounded self-image, the likelihood of social acceptance in their crucial formative years”?

My teenage daughter has marched with me at Pride for the last three years – and has relished the excitement, warmth and possibilities of openness, tolerance and diversity on the streets of Dublin. She loves the colourful celebration that is Pride and – unlike Ms. Power – was profoundly impressed with Panti’s unifying, intelligent and (as always) witty speech. I’m thrilled that she is learning the underlying politics from such an articulate spokesperson. She’ll need this as she moves out in the world…and faces the only real threat to ‘self-image’ as a teenager in a lesbian family – the ugly prejudice and close-mindedness of the Brenda Powers of this world.

Related posts:

1. Spreadin’ the news
2. Dublin Pride 2011 Events Listings
3. What’s on in June

“You know those friends you grew up with? Went to school with? Laughed, cried, partied and pulled with? D’you ever wonder sometimes, will they ever just F*ck Off?”

We’re just friends because we ARE friends, do you know what I mean?

So says Vickey Curtis (AKA Victor) of her best friend since childhoood Aine McKevitt
(AKA Gord) And yes, I DO know what she means! In case you think this was some
confidential information imparted by Vickey, this is in fact the subject matter
of her performance (play? documentary?) Victor and Gord/Ali and Michael
which opens later this week as part of Queer Notions at Project Arts Centre.
So how did the friendship end up on stage?

It was Una’s (sister of Aine/Gord) idea. The three of us have been friends for like…ever. Una gave us the nicknames and had the idea to make a performance of our friendship. To put ‘real lives’ on stage, so we devised the piece around…us, the way we are around each other! It’s full of all things the things we remember from growing up together.

So the rehearsals are about digging into your friendship…?

Yeah completely headwrecking! Sometimes it’s like therapy!

The other ‘characters’ in the play are real-life brother and sister Ali
and Michael Barron. So how did they come on board?

Una found found them on Facebook! She saw a photo of them and thought they looked great! They’re brother and sister and also best friends, they’re hilarious together… and they’ve never acted before!

Director/Actor Una Mckevitt has lots of shows under her belt, mostly as an actor including a 2004 version of Genet’s The Maids: Spurt!Sister!Spurt!(directed by Vickey) which featured our beloved Panti as Madame, naturally!(Panti’s new show A Woman in Progress is also been performed as part of Queer Notions)
So a question for Una, acting or directing?

I’ve always liked performing and when I was at college I usually performed in a show during the summer, such as the one you mention Spurt!Sister!Spurt! in Fringe 2004. At college I studied Devising and Playwriting and the work I make now is really a mix between these two practices. Collaborating with performers and shaping the work we make together for the stage is what makes me excited at the moment.
I love plays, I love going to plays but I’m not a text based performer or director and I can’t think of one play I’d like to perform in or direct! I can think of lots of plays I’d like to make though.

V/G, A/M is part of Queer Notions, a week-long festival presented by Calipo Theatre Company and THISISPOPBABY which celebrates queer ideas and performance, and runs as part of the Dublin LGTBQ Pride celebrations. The festival is curated Phillip McMahon, whose play All Over Town
is also being performed, AND he’s directing Panti… a man with his hands full!

So I asked Vickey what defines V/G, A/M as queer performance:

Oh it’s FULL of queer antics… Michael and I are gay, the others are straight so the way we all connect with each other is just totally queer! People have called is post-dramatic theatre or staged documentary… It’s definitely not NORMAL theatre.

Intrigued? Then head to Project and buy some tickets! Or better still..
the company is giving away TWO FREE TICKETS for Wednesday’s performance to the first email to
victorandgord@gmail.com with Gaelick in the subject line.

And while you’re there check out the other performances. Queer Notions is a fantastically diverse
programme of theatre, art, music, lecture, drag, film and politics. Artists include: Panti, Tonie
Walsh, Phillip McMahon, Niall Sweeney, Bourgeois & Maurice and David Hoyle.

Full details on:

www.projectartscentre.ie

www.thisispopbaby.com

www.calipo.ie

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Festival Director Brian Merriman said that one of his ambitions for the 2009 Festival was MORE WOMEN! And this he has certainly achieved, with a range of world premieres and Irish premieres of all kinds- Comedy, Drama and even for the first time year Dance! Merriman was also delighted to welcome representatives from the Arts Council to the launch, and suggested they might look more favourable on future funding applications by adding a zero or two to their grant allocation! Here’s a few shows that jumped out of the programme for me- but do visit the main website as there are 35 plays in total, so this is only a taster:

Walnuts Remind Me of My Mother is a new play by Elizabeth Moynihan, directed by Noelle Brown, is the darkly comic tale of Rua, a young lesbian from the small village of Spit where “everyone knows everyone”.
At the Cobalt Cafe 4-7th May more details here

More new Irish writing from Bang out of Order theatre Company who are presenting a comedy called Goodnight Alice Tim’s life as a gay single father is difficult enough without the interference of his over protective mother Rose and Alice the aunt from hell.
At Smock Alley Theatre 14th-16th May Details here

Careful from the Artscape New Writing Programme, South Africa is the story of two women. Jean Baxter, a distinguished South African actress, finds work in the new South Africa difficult to come by. Then she gets the opportunity to play the role of a lesbian in a play. Undertaking this role will mean achieving a lifelong ambition for Jean, the opportunity to travel abroad in a show. Jean, a warm, sensitive, married woman and an actress whose preparation is meticulous invites a theatre critic, Leila Russell, who is lesbian, to guide her with the interpretation of the role.
At the Teacher’s Club 11-16th May Details here

Lastly (for now!) a dance performance Dog of All Creation Fitzgerald & Stapleton with Lighting Designer Barry Madden’s latest major choreography, written in language of extreme concision, creates a new language to convey the creation of being. Also all ticket income from these shows is being donated to St. James’s Hospital Foundation : The New Fill HIV Service. (oh there’s also a warning that this show contain nudity… but that may be obvious from the image!)
At Smock Alley and also Outhouse Theatre Details here

For details of the rest of the programme visit: http://www.gaytheatre.ie/

Let us know what you think, and watch this space for reviews, interviews and theatrics in general!

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If you’ve read the book or seen a trailer, you’ll be forewarned that this is not a feelgood film… effectively it’s a claustrophobic two hours witnessing a marriage and the America dream dissolve, and despite good performances and beautiful cinematography there are times you’d wish Winslet and DiCaprio had gone down with the Titanic, rather than having to accompany them in their kitchen, bedroom or car as they relentlessly hurl abuse at each other. This discomfort and claustrophobia is all part of Mendes artistry, he is also a renowed theatre director – and there’s quite a theatrical feel throughout in the stucture and weighty lines:

April Wheeler: Tell me the truth Frank remember that? We used to live by it. And you know what’s so good about the truth? Everyone knows what it is however long they’ve lived without it. No one forgets the truth Frank they just get better at lying.

April aspires to an acting career, but instead has a tantrum following a cringe-worthy amateur drama performance in a local school hall. Frank’s not sure what he wants – he fell into a job at the same firm that his father anonymously toiled in for 20 years, and he bides his time bored at his desk or sleazily seducing young secretaries from the typing pool. So far the Wheelers are thoroughly unlikable – utterly absorbed in themselves and their marriage- and when they pause in the shrieking, they deliver earnest tracts about the nature of their relationship:

April Wheeler: I wanted IN. I just wanted us to live again. For years I thought we’ve shared this secret that we would be wonderful in the world. I don’t know exactly how, but just the possibility kept me hoping.

To this end, on Frank’s 30th birthday, April hatches a plans that the family move to Paris – she’ll work to support them while Frank figures out what he is meant to do with his life. Meanwhile their neighbour and realtor Helen Givings (Kathy Bates), who considers them the epitome of a perfect young couple, asks them to meet with her psychiatrically troubled son John (Michael Shannon – a performance well-deserving of his Oscar nomination, and he has all the best lines!) John is the true radical, honest and free of the social inhibitions to prevent him from commenting on the sham he sees before him:

John Givings: Hopeless emptiness. Now you’ve said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness

This ‘hopeless emptiness” of the suburbs and the empty conformist life is central to the film, and clearly the intent of the novel- radical for its time- as Richard Yates comments in a late interview :

I think I meant it more as an indictment of American life in the nineteen-fifties. Because during the Fifties there was a general lust for conformity all over this country, by no means only in the suburbs – a kind of blind, desperate clinging to safety and security at any price, as exemplified politically in the Eisenhower administration and the Joe McCarthy witch-hunts. Anyway, a great many Americans were deeply disturbed by all that – felt it to be an outright betrayal of our best and bravest revolutionary spirit – and that was the spirit I tried to embody in the character of April Wheeler. I meant the title to suggest that the revolutionary road of 1776 had come to something very much like a dead end in the Fifties. 
 

This is where the film has come in for some criticism… In Mendes’ film, does April Wheeler encompass that revolutionary spirit? Is she a brave visionary - a feminist eschewing the conformity and vacuousness of being a mere ‘wife’, not unlike the character of Betty Draper in Mad Men or Laura Brown (Julianne Moore’s character) in The Hours? Or is she hysterical, vain and ultimately too selfish to be a mother? Clearly she is meant to be the former, but at times the part seems disappointing and underwritten.

Winslet is excellent as April - beautiful, tragic- embodying that ‘special’ quality that the Wheelers aspire to. Aside from her overcooked Golden Globe acceptance speeches, and -if they are true- some shockingly idiotic press quotes (like claiming she had to get drunk for a lesbian kiss in Jane Campion’s film Holy Smoke “I wasn’t drunk to the point of falling over, but it really helped me to find out what I needed to do for the scene.” Ahem, try acting Kate? Anyhow she should have had plenty of practice from her first film Heavenly Creatures!), she is an exemplary screen actor who picks interesting, challenging films and rarely hits a wrong note! She’s having a great year, between this and The Reader and is nominated for an Oscar for the latter- her sixth Academy Award nomination so maybe this year? Interesting Sam Mendes, also Winslet’s husband, claims he read the Revolutionary Road screenplay first because Kate wanted to play the part!

Leonardo DiCaprio is another matter entirely… maybe I just don’t like him? As an adult actor, his boyish features bore me and I find him  petulant and irritating.  I know with Frank Wheeler, Leo is intentionally mannered and false- as he’s playing a part of someone acting a role, if you’re with me!- but he’s just so dull! In fact the only guffaw I had in the entire film is that line which also appears in the trailer..

April: Frank Wheeler I think you may be the most interesting person I have ever met.

 Much has been made in the press of the chemistry between the two leads, and every still released by the stuio seems to have them in an embrace – but in keeping with the novel, it is the distance between them which is most striking. From Yates’ perspective:

There’s a great deal of dialogue between them in the finished book, both when they’re affectionate and when they’re fighting, but there’s almost no communication.

I hope I haven’t put people off the film – it is a well-made, moving and intelligent questioning of 1950s consumerist, conformist values, that permeate society in so many ugly ways today. And there’s plenty of plot I haven’t touched on for fear of spoilers. As an aside, its two perfunctory sex scenes (approx 7 seconds each- cut to plaintive unfulfilled look from Kate) are as good a slur on hetrosexuality as the shrieking fights are on loveless marriages! 

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Born in Washington DC in 1961, Homes is a novelist, short-story writer, journalist, memoir writer and has a whole host of awards and achievements. She is also a television writer and producer for the L Word (writer for Series 2 and producer for Series 3) and at this point I should confess to Gaelick readers that I don’t watch the show – having dabbled and found it a tad fluffy – but before you take away my lesbian passport, given that Homes is involved, I might give it a second chance! (Especially after reading Orange’s summary… ) according to DIVA magazine, Homes enjoyed every L-Word minute

‘I had a great time doing it. It was such fun to work in television; I’d never done it before. I was so nervous before I started, because I hadn’t had a job since I was twenty-something years old, and also because I wasn’t at all familiar with writing for that medium.’

I got interested in Homes from an article in the New Yorker which was the basis of her recent memoir about her adoption The Mistress’s Daughter - as I loved the brutally funny and detached way she described meeting with her birthmother and birthfather. The book charts an extraordinary emotional journey, as Homes has utterly bizarre encounters with these ‘parents’ who are total strangers.

    “The return of my biological family was traumatic—paralyzing—and I just wanted to capture  the events without processing or analysis, to deliver the story back to myself, as though by writing it down, it would begin to make sense.”

Her birthmother turns out to be a troubled, unstable and insecure woman who, with an irony that escaped her, wanted Homes to take care of her and when that wasn’t happening stalked her by showing up at a public reading to introduce herself.  Her birthfather behaves as if he is having an illicit affair, and told the mid 30s writer in her linen trousers that she had not dressed nicely enough to be brought to lunch, on the day he took her for a DNA test!  This is fascinating and brilliantly researched piece of autobiography. Homes’ style is at times terrifyingly clinical and yet she allows the shocking humour of the situation to surface. 

Her most recent novel is the deservingly popular This Book Will Save Your Life -  a searing satire on LA and the vanity and vacuousness of modern living, US style. The central character is 50-something successful trader called Richard Novak who hits a psychosomatic health crisis, despite his personal trainer
and macrobiotic eating habits.  There are layers and layers of irony at play here- and a giant doughnut metaphor thoughout – the hole at the centre, symbolic of Richard’s (and Homer Simpson’s and America’s) great spiritual void. Richard craves doughnuts and builds his first ‘real’ relationship with an immigrant doughnut shop-owner, Anhil- and their friendship and the greasy carb pleasures bring him closer to his own humanity.  You’re never sure just how much Homes is toying with you, which I like- on the one hand she’s attacking the self-help culture, yet she titles her book as something you’d find in a Mind Body Spirit shelf - seeking out the very readers that you would imagine her to be scathing of – and is at times she as sympathetic as she is scathing toward her protagonist. It very likely won’t save your life, but it may well rekindle your interest in American fiction! I’d recommend it to anyone who likes their humour a little black.

Next up I read her her first novel Jack, written when she was only 19. It is a warm and often kindly (though never mawkish or sentimental) account of a teen boy coming to terms with the fact that his father is gay. The layers of cynicism and ironies are less evident in the fresh Homes, and her characterisation and obvious empathy for the teen boy is spot on. Interestingly, given Jack and Richard Novak, she seems far more at home with male characters.

I can safely say that her novel The End of Alice (first published in the US in 1996) is the most disturbing and at times nausiating novels I have ever read (and I’ve read a lot of edgy fiction!) The plot centres around a correspondance between a convicted, imprisoned paedophile and a ‘fan’ of his- a 19 year old young woman who harbour fantasies about raping/molesting a young boy. There are many, many nods Nabokov’s Lolita in the style, cleverness of the narrative twists and the general uravelling of the plot into crazed mind of the narrator, so you really aren’t sure what is ‘real’.  I suspect I’d have abandoned it, as I found it very disturbing, nasty and relentless sordid , but as I’d come to enjoy – and trust- Homes as a writer with the other books,  I stuck with it. The book caused a bit of an outcry, although termed “exhilaratingly perverse”  by the New York Times Book Review, the  UK National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children called it ‘debasing and repugnant’ . It was banned by WH Smith in the UK and translations that were planned were cancelled.  In an early interview for Powells, she describes the book:

With Alice, I wanted to write a book where people, at times, would be very drawn into it, seduced by it – then on the very next page want to throw the book across the room because they’re so upset that they’ve been seduced, that they’ve been had by this guy. Then a minute or two passes and they have to get up and go get it so they can pick it up and read some more.

I like that book a lot. I feel, as a writer, that I worked incredibly hard and I did what I wanted to do. A big thing was to not shy away from the material. My responsibility is to not worry about what people are going to think, but to worry about the character and how to most accurately represent him.   

She is  serious writer, with plenty of integrity… I don’t think the book should be banned, (Down With That Sort of Thing) but for a while I wished she hadn’t written it, now I just wish I hadn’t read it! In time I’ll probably be happy to engage with it on the intellectual level she allegedly wants, rather than something that produced a retching, visceral response! 

Anyhow, one more book to mention is In the Country of Mothers… written before her memoir, it is shockingly similar. The plot is a tad complex, so here’s how her publishers describe it ;

Claire Roth, a capable, established psychotherapist with an adoring husband and children no more alienated than normal, her new patient Jody Goodman—a witty and attractive young filmmaker—is a welcome diversion from a routine at once comfortable and predictable. Jody, successful yet uncertain about living apart from her adoptive parents for the first time, is disarmed by Claire’s interest and approval. Gradually, for these two—exactly the right ages to be mother and daughter—the lines between friendship and family, between love and compulsion, begin to lose their focus.

This is the book where many of  AM Homes issues are toyed with, as is the reader, trying to figure out what is happening amid the various breakdowns (that unravelling trick yet again!)  of the central characters. This isn’t an easy book to read either, Jody has some particularly horrid heterosexual encounters and mothers come accross as fairly crazed, absent or pathological liars… still, a picnic compared to End of Alice! 

We’ve got to the very end of all this without that old bugbear of a question or comment on the writer’s sexuality- and does it matter anyway?-  For the record, Amy Michael Homes (called AM since she was a child apparently) eshews lables, though she told DIVA:

 ‘I am bisexual, but I wouldn’t necessarily define myself that way. My sense of self goes so far beyond any single word. Label, schmabel! It doesn’t begin to describe who I am. I’m a writer, a parent of a three-year-old child. Who I happen to be sleeping with is nobody’s business.’

She doesn’t seem to have a new book forthcoming yet (correct me if I’m wrong Gaelick readers!), but she is one of the contributing writers to Jeanette Winterson’s serial book 52 , which given the line up of interesting lesbian writers (Ali Smith, Jackie Kay and Winterson herself) I’ll shall be checking out soon!

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The Reader reunties the creative team behind The Hours – Director Stephen Daldry with screenwriter David Hare. I thought Michael Cunningham’s stunning novel couldn’t be filmed, so I ate my words shortly after I shuffled out of the cinema, blinking back the tears, gushing at the remarkable achievement. I went to The Reader with different expectation, as I found the 1995 novel by law professor Bernhard Schlink necessarily cold and troubling – stimulating moral questions rather than any emotional ones. In David Hare’s words :

Schlink’s singular achievement ..(is) to invent a narrative that finally articulated the dilemma of so many Germans who were born, through no fault of their own, as the children of a great crime. How does a succeeding generation deal with the transgressions of their parents? How do they find a way of living anything like a normal life? The Reader is not simply a novel specific to the postwar German experience. It is also a more far-reaching exploration of the painful and difficult process we all now know under the name of truth and reconciliation.

So, serious issues and difficult filmic material await. The film opens in a morning in 1995, when lawyer Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes) mutters goodbye to woman who has spent the night. Clearly she has found him cold and aloof, and we flashback to 1958 to find the root of this emotional stuntedness.

*plot spoilers ahead* When 15 year old Michael (excellent young German actor David Kross) vomits in front of tram-worker Hanna Schmitz’s (Kate Winslet) appartment, she takes pity on on him and walks the feverish young boy back to his affluent home. Three months later when he has recovered from scarlet fever, and at the behest of his mother, he returns to thank her… and at this point Hanna Schmizt, over twice his age, seduces him. Young Michael is depicted as eager and willing thoughout, delighted by the initiation Hanna is offering him – and as there are so many other other morality issues going on in this film, the question of whether this sexual relationship was abusive becuase of the age imbalance is not at the forefront of the film. (suffice to say, it caused young Michael life-long emotional turmoil for a mutiplicity of reasons)

With puppy-like enthusiasm, Michael trots to Hanna’s appartment regularly after school, they have sex and then he reads to her, until she decides they’ll do it the other way around. Young Michael reads schoolbooks, plays and novels aloud – The Odyssey, Huckleberry Finn, Lady Chatterly’s Lover – much to the pleasure of Hanna, whom we later discover is illiterate. After a lover’s tiff, Hanna disappears abruptly.  The next time Michael encounters her is 1966, by which stage he is a law student observing the Holocaust War Trials. At this point he discovers the atrocities that Hanna has committed – which include locking 30 Jewish women inside a church and allowing them burn to death. At this point it also dawns on Michael that Hanna is illiterate, and tht she is so shameful of the fact  she is concealing it, despite being framed by her co-accused as report-writer and therefore leader and instigator of the atrocities. Michael wrestles with this vital piece of evidence: Should he reveal it, and allow Hanna be charged with the lesser crime? Or is her unquestioning compliance with such murder and cruelty so repugnant that she deserves to be locked away for life regardless? He stays quiet, and is racked with guilt.

A decade later, still guilty and with a broken marriage, Michael begins recording books for Hanna on a cassette deck, and posts them to her in prison. When she receives them, her only contact from the outside world, she teaches herself to read and write. I’ll stop here, to leave plenty of plot for those who haven’t seen it or read it. The complex layers of guilt and shame continue and Daldry/Hare try to stay true to the book’s original intent, which was to offer no possiblity of redemption or forgiveness for the crimes committed. As David Hare states:

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Some brief online research lead me to realise that Amazon’s bestsellers weren’t exactly what I was looking for. The top anthology seems to be The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories by Alisa Surkis and Monica Nolan, closely followed by the Best Lesbian Bondage Erotica which judging by the cover has lots of stirrups in play also…but the most seasonal is surely Dyke the Halls: Lesbian Erotic Christmas Stories !

While I could spend the rest of the day wondering what particular paraphenalia of Christmas is employed in activities of a sexual nature, to the tune of O Holy Night for the devout, at this point it was 9am and I reckoned I should move on!

I find online shopping for books only really works if you know exactly what you are after. I LOVE the tactile browsing and chatting that a terrestrial bookshop offers. So, to save myself some legwork, I decided to ring around a few Dublin shops and see where I’d do my browsing and buying. Using my most journalistic voice I explained I was writing an article on gift ideas for lesbians for Christmas – what books would they recommend?

I started with Books Upstairs, the shop that sold the ‘incendiary’ incitement to radical feminism Spare Rib in the late 1970s and in a pre www world supplied most Irish lesbians with their first ‘oh wow, it’s not just me’ book.

Familiar with simple queries such as mine, they kicked off with the book every lesbian should be reading this Christmas:

Our Lives Out Loud Katherine Zappone and Ann Louise Gilligan (see Gaelick review here)

Next up a new history book which seems mostly focussed on male historical figures. Publishers claim it  traces “the love that dare not speak its name” from early Ireland to the late 20th century:

Terrible Queer Creatures: A History of Homosexuality in Ireland by Brian Lacey

Also recommended were two coffee table books for for the film buff in your life…The Queer Movie Poster Book by Jenni Olsen and The Bent Lens: A World Guide to Gay and Lesbian Film by Lisa Daniel and Claire Jackson. And, as always, beloved lesbian writers Emma Donoghue, Sarah Waters and Jeanette Winterson are selling well and for ’lighter’ fiction the Red Hot Diva range from the magazine/publisher.

An excellent start, but then it all went pear shaped…

A timid American man answered the phone in Waterstones, Dawson Street :

“None I’m afraid,” he replied, in a somewhat sheepish voice.

“None?” I said, a little surprised. “Well, could you put me though to someone else – whoever is your buyer is for that section?”

“Er… the lesbian and gay section has been absorbed by the rest of the shop, so there’s no-one who can help you.”

Absorbed. Hmmm. There’s a pun in there, but I’m not going to make it. Though a chainstore, this branch used have a gay and lesbian section, small and wholesome, but something at least. Recent controversy over bending to right-wing pressure and cancelling a book launch by  Patrick Jones, a gay poet, at their Cardiff branch, suggests we should take our business elsewhere. NEXT!

I rang Easons flagship store on O’Connell Street and was put through to a floor manager, who was a little more eager to sell, but sadly clueless:

“No. I can’t think of anything… no… nothing coming to mind….” (I could almost hear him shaking his head in exasperation at missing a sale!)

“Well, could you put me though to someone who could help?”

“Um… We don’t have a section as such…”

“But you have lots of books, surely..?”

“Well… the closest would probably be the health section in the basement…”

Health?! I’m not taking that one lying down…

“But I was hoping for a good novel or biography?”

“Like a famous person who was lesbian?”

(Was or is even, but at least he’s trying)

“Yes, do you have any?”

“Possibly, but we don’t file them by um… sexuality… just alphabetically….”

Next up Hughes and Hughes, Dun Laoghaire. I got a very chirpy bookseller who answered the phone giving her name, but when I asked about lesbian books…

“Oh God! I haven’t a clue actually…”

*silence*

“Would there be any biographies…?” I offered, helpfully, knowing they’ve ample supplies of Our Lives Out Loud, having seen them on the shelves there last week!

“Oh God… um…not exactly… would Russell Brand be any good?”

“Not quite what I was looking for…”

Realising it was their probem, not mine, she suggested I call back when the manager was around “because she might come up with something!”

Enough nonsense, back to the experts! I phoned Gay’s the Word Bookshop in London.

They were so wonderfully helpful, here’s their spiel :

Gay’s The Word was the UK’s pioneering first (and is today the last surviving) lesbian and gay bookshop. Established in 1979 and located in the historic Bloomsbury district of London, we stock an enormous range of books; from the profound to the frivolous, from the liberating to the indulgent. Our fiction ranges from prize-winning literary works through to detective, romance and erotic fiction. Our non-fiction covers a wide range of issues from cutting-edge queer theory through to how to tell your mother you are gay. Our range of queer philosophical, political, historical and other scholarly works is unequalled in the UK. When we recommend a title, it’s because we’ve read it and particularly enjoyed it. We are proudly independent and very much see ourselves as the friendly and non-judgemental safe-space of the gay scene. We are a straight-friendly gay-family business! We have books on gay subject-matter across all genres and also host free book readings and signings.

They had a rough year in 2007, but writers and activists rallied around and they survived. I was put straight through to Jim MacSweeney, their lovely manager from Cork …! Jim was delighted to help, we could have chatted all day and his first recommendation was right on target:

Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel

“Excellent!” I say and realise I must sound like his old headmistress, so he offers me the next one, I guess just to check…

Lesbian 101: 101 Lesbian Sex Positions by Jude Schell. Jim promises a photo on every page and his tone is a joyful and celebratory as the season itself.

Recomendation number three is Shape Yourself by Martina Navratilova.

“Not a new book”, Jim says, “but after I’m a Celebrity… it’s selling well and it has a LOVELY photo of her on the cover!”

Next up Emma Donoghue’s Landing, a Canadian publication which GTW has imported specially.

“You only want 5?” Jim says, and I can tell he’s struggling to edit down his favourites.

“Now here’s a left of field one, but it’s an absolutely beautiful book. Fair Play by Finnish writer Tove Jansson. A love story about two women who were lifelong partners.”

“I know it! I was given it last Christmas!”

“Oh isn’t it great!” Jim says. “I gave it to my mother last Christmas!”

Lastly I asked him to recommend a children’s book from the extensive range they carry. (Some listed here)

“My favourite is Spacegirl Pukes by Katy Watson, about a little girl who goes up into space and gets sick, and then both her mothers get sick… it’s great fun!”

(sadly, I subsequently discovered that Katy Watson died earlier this year…)

The moral of the story is clear- buy from Books Upstairs and Gay’s The Word and keep these shops going this Christmas, otherwise we will be consigned to ‘health sections’ and short of swallowing the Little Book of Calm, we will not be satisfied!

Both have underwhelming websites, here are the phone numbers:

Gay The Word +44 20 7278-7654
sales@gaystheword.co.uk

Books Upstairs (01) 679 6687
info@booksupstairs.com

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Dykes to Watch Out For, Alison Bechdel’s fictional cartoon strip charting the lives and loves of an evolving group of lesbian friends and lovers, started over 25 years ago and now is syndicated to over 50 alternative newspapers and published by Firebrand Books in 11 volumes. In her gleeful, graphic soap opera, Bechdel tracks the relationships, political crises, sexual explorations, careers and parenthood of her characters, mostly revolving around her central heroine Mo, an often lovelorn, politically committed feminist and under-appreciated bookseller at Madwimmen Books. Now the cult soap has been gathered into a handsome coffee table book (dare I say perfect Christmas pressie? *ducking*) Essential Dykes to Watch Out For

Meanwhile, Bechdel has written a fantastic graphic memoir, Fun Home : A Family Tragicomedy primarily focussed on her complex relationship with her father, a funeral home director who lived a closeted gay life. This is an utterly engrossing and remarkably moving book, and the beautifully detailed drawings render it like watching a film and reading all at once. (if you have never read a graphic novel, try this one.. if you read loads, you probably have it already!)) She is an obsessive documenter, archivist and analyser – scraps of diaries, fragments of photograph, passages of literature are all scrutinised as she strives to understand the distant father that she identifies with so much. True to her DTWOF tone, there is much hilarity in here too and an incredible rich evocation of her early childhood.

Complex psychological layers of sexuality, family, and self identity are explored with the precision of a surgeon:

“Perhaps my eagerness to claim him as ‘gay’ in the way that I am ‘gay’ as opposed to some other category, is just a way of keeping him to myself- a sort of inverted Oedipal Complex..”

It is also a love affair with literature, as the books both she and her father read are evoked and quoted throughout. The verbosity and intellectual twirls will dazzle you, but ultimately it is a deeply emotional book. Her fumbled, thwarted attempts to hug her coolly intellectual father will make you cry, her gorgeous sexual awaking passages will delight you, and her loss – and bravery to address it – will break your heart.

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First-time director and writer Philippe Claudel has made a remarkably beautiful, sensitive and thought-provoking film. Kristin Scott Thomas gives a tremendously subtle performance as Juliette, a woman who’s spent 15 years in prison, released into the care of her younger sister’s family. Scott Tomas is utterly convincing, drawn and haggard in ill-fitting clothes, her face for the most part almost expressionless and make-up free (why do we NEVER see actors in American films like this?). She barely speaks, so acts primarily with her eyes and her stillness – her skin almost – to convey the depths of pain and discomfort Juliette feels, as she is thrust into the centre of this ebullient bourgeois French family that she barely knows. 

The mystery of Juliette’s crime unfolds gradually throughout the film and indeed as this unfolding and uncertainty is so critical to the film, it is best to leave the plot as bald as that. It’s not easy subject matter, but what is utterly delightful about this film is the complex portrayal of the family tensions, the delicate forging of a new bond between the two sisters (younger sister Léa is played in a brilliantly contrasting tempo by Elsa Zylberstein) and there are some joyful, playful moments between the mute mischievous grandfather and the extrovert eight year old daughter. Every tertiary character is brilliantly drawn and tantalisingly interesting. I was left wanting different films for the fumbling and sympathetic police officer, the social worker, the wash-up academic.. so often we see fleeting characters like these appear and disappear onscreen in a trail of cliché… yet here each has quirks, temperament, personality.

AND all this ensemble playing doesn’t detract from the fact that this is a career-defining performance from Scott Thomas – deserving of an Oscar and more – a veritable showcase for the craft of screen acting, if only Hollywood would pay heed and reduce the vacuous celebrity mincing that passes for acting in the blockbusters! 

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Q:  First off welcome to Gaelick! Are you a fan of LGBT websites, blogs, the internet in general?

A:  I’m a fan of the internet in general because it’s made research on any topic so much easier, and because it lets me hear from readers all over the world.  The other day I learned that I have one assiduous fan in South Korea! I look at LGBT websites sometimes, but blogs almost never… the internet for me is all about work, I just don’t have the time for fun browsing.

Q:  One of the reasons we’re delighted to interview you is that you are our foremost Irish lesbian writer! How do all those labels sit with you, do you still feel ‘”Irish” despite your home being Canada for the past decade or so?

A:  Oh yes, spending your first twenty years in Ireland shapes you for life.

Q:  How do you view the changes in Ireland since you’ve left, specifically regarding Gay and Lesbian rights, but also this so-called Celtic tiger which has been on the rampage for a while now?

A:  With very mixed feelings.  In the 1980s I would have said I’d like nothing more than for Ireland to modernise, but some of the side-effects (stress, rudeness, speed, racism) have been downright ugly.  On the whole, though, I’m glad Ireland has changed, because otherwise it would have been the land that time forgot.  And some of the novelties, like a few civil rights for queer folks, have been wonderful.

Q:  What is Ontario like as a place to live, work, raise children?

A:  For me, as a lesbian mother – one of the best places in the world at the moment.  Chris and I are both legal parents of our children and treated with respect by every professional we come across (school, health, government).

Q:  How are you finding the life-work balance with motherhood and writing? Has it changed your approach to writing in any way?

A:  It’s always a bit of a strain – a tightrope walker wobbling and wrestling with her pole! The moment when I look at the clock and realise I have to shut my computer and scurry off to pick up the baby… I always briefly think damn, why did I have children?!  But at calmer moments I remind myself that I seem to get as much done in limited hours as I used to in unlimited ones.  I think it’s the relaxed leisure time to myself that’s gone out the window – my writing itself seems to somehow squeeze into the available hours.  I do avoid really elaborate research like the kind I did for LIFE MASK, though; I just can’t spend day after day in the library anymore.

Q:  Could you tell us a little about your new book ‘The Sealed Letter’ and how you came across the 19th Century scandal it is based upon?

A:  This one was suggested to me by a footnote in a collection of Victorian women’s poetry, that mentioned that leading feminist publisher Emily ‘Fido’ Faithfull was dragged into her beloved friend’s mucky divorce case in 1864.  ‘The Sealed Letter’ is research-light, by my rather strange standards, because it only covers a period of a few months and a few social circles (military, legal, feminist). It’s mostly based on the detailed daily reports on the divorce case in The Times. I deliberately didn’t include long descriptions of Victorian London or multi-course dinner parties, because I wanted this novel to move swiftly and ruthlessly towards the courtroom drama.  My weakness as a writer is plot – I tend to let it give way to character and dialogue – so with this novel, I really pushed myself to give the story clarity, suspense and momentum before I began writing it.

Q:  As a writer of both historical and contemporary fiction, how does the process compare?

A:  Ooo, they’re my two loves, I wouldn’t want to badmouth either.  After a long period with one it’s always refreshing to move to the other.  But I will say that the historicals (especially because they have been based on real cases) there’s a primal excitement at working with such life-or-death situations, whereas with the contemporaries (which are often more autobiographical) I find it a lot easier to make jokes.

Q:  Were you tempted with ’The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits’ (short stories based on a variety of fascinating historical characters) to devote a novel to each one?

A:  Good question – and in fact my radio play ‘Trespasses’ (about a witch trial in Youghal in the seventeenth century) and my novel ‘Slammerkin’ (about an eighteenth-century murder) both began as story ideas, then leapt into a larger form.  Some of the story situations were quite interesting enough for a novel – or instance, the one about the eighteenth-century doomsday cult starving themselves – but just too grim for me to want to spend that much time with!

Q:  ’Touchy Subjects’, your collection of contemporary short stories, came out in 2006.  Some were stories which had appeared before and some new, do you often write a story on the side when you are midway though a novel? Or do they punctuate your lengthier writing projects?

A:  Oh yes, I often stray in the middle of something bigger, that’s how I write my stories.  If I wrote them all in a clump I fear they would get more samey; I really like my stories to be different miniature worlds.

Q:  What is your opinion of the smaller publishing houses and their chances of survival in this publishing industry today?

A:  Smaller publishing houses actually have a good chance of thriving, I think, because they have the flexibility to take on titles the big conglomerates wouldn’t, and publish them faster too.  The same goes for independent bookshops – we’re finding that they’re actually better able to compete with
Amazon than the big chains, because they offer something distinctive.

Q:  Do you worry about the future of literary or so-called niche fiction?

A:  Absolutely: the trade is more and more skewed towards shifting huge quantities of a few bestsellers, selling books as if they were toilet rolls.  Those of us who are ‘mid-list authors’ (as the polite phrase goes) have many reasons for insomnia.  I’m just glad Chris has a tenured university job, so the mortgage is covered!

Q:  How do you find the necessary public aspects of being a writer – do you enjoy participating in readings, conferences, literary festivals?

A:  I’m embarrassed to admit that, unlike the many writers who are intense, deep, private, and shun the limelight, I love every bit of it.  Especially now I have kids; getting to go off on my own and talk about my books (often with a free lunch thrown in!) is bliss.

Q:  You’ve written for film, theatre, radio and recently directed a documentary on lesbian motherhood (‘Immaculate Conceptions: Inside the Lesbian Baby Boom’).  How do you find writing and working in these very different media?

A:  Very pleasurable.  Though with my limited hours these days, I’m having to focus on fiction (my favourite) and sadly haven’t had time for theatre.

Q:  Your documentary will be screened at the forthcoming GAZE film festival. What prompted you to make the film, and have you had much response to it so far?

A:  It was seeing a rather feeble documentary on the same subject – all very much ‘we’re just like normal families’ – that made me think I could do better, if I just asked myself, Chris and a bunch of our friends some probing questions.  Everyone was wonderfully honest with me, and even just within our social circle there was a great range of family structures, not just two mums (with either or both getting pregnant) but involved donors, a gay man and a lesbian co-parenting, fostering and adoption…

Q:  Has it tempted you to make more documentaries – an Irish version perhaps?!

A:  Yes, I’d like to do it again sometime, maybe a follow-up in five years, as already there’ve been interesting changes: a couple who were on the point of giving up have had their first child, and another couple has broken up and are sharing custody harmoniously.  An Irish equivalent would be fascinating, if one could find enough families willing to risk the publicity…

Q:  Who are enjoying reading these days, any recommendations?

A:  Barbara Gowdy, ‘Helpless’, brilliant Canadian novel that rethinks pedophilia.

Cormac MacCarthy, ‘The Road’, added to my insomnia but it’s still the best book of last year.

Alison Bechdel, ‘Fun Home’.  Talk about the benefits of shifting genre! – this cartoonist has produced a thrilling Proustian graphic memoir about her closeted homo dad.

Q:  What are you working on at present?

A:  Finishing up a big history of lesbian-themed literature for the general reader, to be published by Knopf.

Q:  Lastly, for someone new to your fiction, where would you suggest they begin?

A:  ’Landing’ (only available in North America, but can be imported or bought online) is extremely approachable – a post-closet romance about a long-distance relationship between an Irishwoman and a Canadian.

• www.emmadonoghue.com

• ‘Immaculate Conceptions: Inside a Lesbian Baby Boom’ screens in Project Arts Centre on Friday 1st August 2008 as part of the Gaze festival.

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A ‘happily married’ woman whose life starts unravelling… a well-worn, yet invariably seductive theme for novel. What reader doesn’t want to be unravelled and restrung, if not in life at least though fiction. I was expecting a little of the quirky humour of Anne Tyler, and a touch of Lorrie Moore’s edgy teens, and all of the obvious wit and intelligence of Rebecca Miller – film-maker (Personal Velocity, The Ballad of Jack and Rose), short-story writer (Personal Velocity), and having seen her in public interview for Personal Velocity, I was anticipating razor-sharp writing to match her incisive, studied and self-assured way of articulating the lives of women. So off we go, no pressure Rebecca

Having lived a bohemian life to the full, Pippa Lee finds herself in her early 50s with her husband Herb, 30 years her senior, settling into a retirement community called ‘Marigold Village’. As the stifling dullness of ‘wrinkle village’ and its inhabitants start to suffocate Pippa (and the readers) we skip to flashback mode and learn of Pippa’s more colourful life to this point. Pippa causes scandal at 16 by initiating and exploring sex with a somewhat tragic, downtrodden, balding teacher named Mr. Brown (who wouldn’t be out of place in Roger Hargreaves series, if there was a Mr. Unhappily Married) and as result breaks free from her clawing, cloying, pill-popping mother Suky, her hapless Minister father, and four, somewhat anonymous, boisterous brothers and into the arms of sensible aunt Trish, who introduces heself as a fellow ‘black sheep’.

Before we’ve chance to draw breath, Trish’s lover Kat has embroiled the teen into a hardcore S+M photo-shoot for her ‘novel’… (I may be mellowing, or becoming complacent, as I think in the past I would have been outraged by the permanent weals on Pippa’s back from her encounter with lesbians- hmmm so lesbians are predatory, cliched, and heartless… or weak, homely types like the aunt? I’m letting Miller off-the-hook here, only because I reckon maybe, just maybe, there are enough three dimensional portrayals of lesbian lives out there! )

Back to Pippa’s lives – and I’m not going to introduce any more spoilers, suffice to say I found the fucked-up teen a lot more palatable than the docile wife and yet wanted to return to the latter, to look for signs of life underneath the talk of what she is preparing for her husband’s dinner. At times the novel tread an uneasy line for me, between presenting and subverting cliche. I decided this was brave of Miller, not lazy. She’s a natural, often playful, storyteller, perhaps more at home as a writer-director, letting her gift for casting and eliciting intimate performances bring a complexity to her characters that is sometimes lacking on the page. (There is a film in production, unsurprisingly, with some of Hollywood’s finest including Robin Wright Penn as Pippa, Alan Arkin as Herb, Julianne Moore as Kat ) As character AND narrative builder, I found that Miller sometimes allows one eclipse the other. She introduces Pippa as a ‘cypher’.. yet the rest, the arty bohemian backdrop, was the vacuum for me, so for example the reflections on publishing and American novels (Herb is a publisher) seem a little overwrought.

Ultimately the novel seemed a commentary on wives and the ugly, unnecessary domestication of women. With the introduction of Pippa’s headstrong daughter Grace, we clock up four generations of mother-daughter turmoil, passionate and often cruel. I found I was matching and rejecting the degrees of feminism and refections on motherhood, like a familiar card game. Maybe if I’d read it at a time I felt stuck in my own life (many times!), it would have felt more profound and less of a game.

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is Published by Cannongate, 2008

Amazon Link

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