My new book is out very soon! Read about my love of bookshops and my work as a bookseller below.
Bookshops are one of my favourite places. The world moves pretty fast, but when I step through the doors of a bookshop everything slows down and I start to feel calm and hopeful. I treasure the chats I have with fellow booksellers about what they are reading and always walk out of a bookshop with my spirits lifted.
When I came across a book about Parsons bookshop on Baggot Street in Dublin, which was run by five women, I was fascinated. In the 1950s Parsons was at the heart of what we now call Baggotonia, a vibrant place full of writers, artists and theatre folk. There’s something really interesting here, I thought, and I started to dig a bit deeper into the era.
As I started to read more about Ireland in the 1950s, I began to realise how little agency many girls and woman had at the time. I was particularly struck by the unfairness of the Marriage Bar which meant that many Irish women had to leave a civil service job once they got married, something that didn’t change until 1973.
I began to think about women like Mary Robinson and Nell McCafferty who were girls in the 1950s. They were both born in the same year in fact, 1944. As girl, Mary’s parents told her she had the same potential, the same opportunities and rights as her four brothers but she said ‘Irish society was telling me something very different’.
I decided to write a children’s novel set in 1956. I had a setting: a bookshop inspired by Parsons that I called Baggot Books, and a theme: girls and women who were trying to make Ireland a more equal place for all. I then created my main characters: two young sisters, Rosy and Martha, and two older sisters, Helen (the girls’ mum) and Toto (the girls’ aunt), the two sets of sisters in The Bookshop Sisters.
I’ve worked in bookshops on and off for over thirty years. My first bookselling job (and my first job after college) was in Hodges Figgis. I’ve also worked in Waterstones on Dawson Street (now Tower Records), and for Eason and Dubray. I’m now the Events Manager at Halfway up the Stairs in Greystones, Co Wicklow, a role I love.
In The Bookshop Sisters I’ve combined my love of bookshops with my love of Irish history. It’s a book very dear to my heart, and I do hope you enjoy reading it.