[caption id="attachment_70213" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Honor Molloy had some cake at the Manhattan launch of “Smarty Girl” last week. "]
“Loosely based” would be the wrong term to use when talking about Honor Molloy’s new novel “Smarty Girl” and her Dublin childhood. She offers instead “fictional riff.” The names have been changed and many imagined details added, but the fundamentals are real.
“My mother is an American who went to get her PhD at Trinity College in 1953. She met my father, a charming young man who’d dropped out of school at the age of 14 on account of the Christian Brothers beat him blue,” she said. “He was an actor/comedian [John Molloy] and together they produced stage plays, radio programs and television shows.
“The book takes up during the halcyon days of what I call the ‘rumbly tumbly’ family and journeys through the destruction of that family and my mother’s flight out of Ireland with her six children,” Molloy added.
Honor Molloy
Place of birth: The Rotunda, Dublin
Date of birth: May 25, 1961
Residence: Brooklyn
What is your writing routine? Are there ideal conditions?
When I am writing, I write on the weekends. I do a self-imposed blackout on internet interaction for the whole weekend so that I don’t get distracted from the deep work. In the morning, I go to a neighborhood indie coffee shop to moodle and/or review notes and then walk the mile to the Brooklyn Writers Space on Garfield Place. The workroom is a quiet room filled with 20-or-so carrels, windows at my back, and a skylight above my preferred desk. I am so conditioned to work there that as soon as I hit the desk and power up, I’m typing away.
What advice do you have for aspiring writers?
Hone your discipline. Get to the desk. Get to the desk as often as you can. Need help? Read Steven Pressfield’s “The War of Art” and Dorothea Brande’s “Becoming a Writer,” two very different approaches to building a writing practice.
Name three books that are memorable in terms of your reading pleasure.
“Ringolevio,” by Emmett Grogan, “Cat’s Eye,” by Margaret Atwood, and Hari Kunzru’s “The Impressionist.”
What book are you currently reading?
“Carry Me Down” by M.J. Hyland.
Is there a book you wish you had written?
“The Heart is a Lonely Hunter,” by Carson McCullers.
Name a book that you were pleasantly surprised by.
Nicholson Baker's “The Fermata.”
If you could meet one author, living or dead, who would it be?
Samuel Beckett.
What book changed your life?
I read “Conference of the Birds” by John Heilpern (at the age of 22).
What is your favorite spot in Ireland?
Inishbofin.
You're Irish if . . .
you like Tayto Crisps.
“Double Dublin!”
In “Double Dublin!”, Kevin Holohan and Honor Molloy will read comic extracts from their novels “The Brothers’ Lot” (published to critical acclaim on the both sides of the Atlantic in 2011) and “Smarty Girl” on this coming Sunday from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m., at the Brooklyn Public Library, Dweck Center, 10 Grand Army Plaza, Lower Level, Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn.
