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A Conversation with
Jacinta McDevitt
author of
the best-seller
Excess Baggage
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She is an important and commanding female voice in contemporary Irish literature.
She has published three best-selling novels: Sign's On (2002), Handle With Care (2003) and Excess
Baggage (2004). Her short story "Way to Go, Dad" was shortlisted for the prestigious Francis MacManus prize.
At the lounge of the plush and ritzy Hilton Hotel, Malahide, Dublin, Ireland
Peter Anny-Nzekwue engages with Jacinta "Cindy" McDevitt
on her life, her writings and her artistic vision.
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Who is Jacinta McDevitt?
"I was born and bred in Dublin, and I'm the very proud mother
of two children, Alan (29) and Lucy (25). I am divorced. But the best way to describe me is that
I am the glass is half-full person. I always think the best of things. Even through all sorts of
hard things that had happened, I do think that there is always a good side. I do think that life
is good, and I enjoy it."
Does it mean nothing puts McDevitt down, nothing makes her feel
life is not worth it?
"I think, maybe, that I am lucky that I haven't ever met a situation
that has made me feel like that. But I think due to the people I know, people that are in my life,
they always keep me up--that is the sort of personality that I have, anyway. So even through
divorce--life was very, very hard at that time and I wouldn't make lighter of it. There is always
a positive that comes out of all these things."
When did you go into writing?
"I always thought that I went into writing very late, but in actual
fact, I wrote comic
for my brother and sister when they were very small. I wrote that years and years
ago. And after I left school, I taught Speech and Drama at the local school and in my house, as well.
There was a limited amount of material to get them to perform on stage, so I ended up writing sketches
and adapting sketches for the students to perform. So that was writing and I never really realised it.
I had also told stories to my children when they were small. Really, it was through a love of books
that I started writing because I love reading and I loved reading to my children and I loved telling
them stories."
One day, McDevit decided to do a writing course. She also
became a member of a writing group and sent her stories into competitions. Then she sent out
one of her short stories to Women’s Way, the biggest women magazine in Ireland as at that
time, and they liked it and published it. They asked her for another story and another and then they
asked her to write a series of articles for them called ‘That’s Life’.
"This is completely different from anything I had ever thought
I would ever do. It was all an accident really."
Isn’t she lucky? At this time, she was winning a lot of competitions
for short stories like the Sligo Modern Arts Competition and second prize in the George Birmingham
Competition and the prestigious Francis McManus award. Her story “Way To Go Dad” was broadcast
on RTE as part of the Francis McManus short story competition. Though she was also getting published
in magazines a lot, she did not think of writing a book until tragedy struck.
| "I actually
enjoy being a woman. I like being a woman...There is more to me than labelling me with a feminist
writer or with a romance writer, but I certainly will not label myself that way. And I don’t
think people who know me will label me that way either."
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“I fell down the stairs and broke my leg. I was out of work
and on the flat of my back for weeks. To distract myself I started a novel and Sign’s On was
born several months later. I recovered nicely from the broken leg with just a little war wound. Then
tragedy struck again. I had a car crash and broke my hip. Handle With Care was my war cry
and the novel I wrote during that time. I nearly gave up writing for fear I would have to break a
limb every time I wanted to write a book. But Excess Baggage is the proof that I can write
while fully intact. Not a nail or even a heart was broken during the writing of that book.”
Sign's On is the story of Linda. She wakes up one morning
and sees a note left for her by her husband. In the note he says he is gone to Greece to find
himself. Abandoned and rejected, Linda is left to cater for their two children all alone. Handle
with Care starts off on a valentine's Day. Eve is on the stairs of a divorce court, about to
get a divorce. And the ex-husband is also at the stairs of a divorce court as well, but he is with
a new woman. Eve thinks that as he has got himself a new woman, why can't she get herself a new man?
So she sets about finding herself a decent partner. Excess Baggage is about a woman, who is a
lone parent, questioning men’s commitment and wondering if the problem is really with her own ability
to commit. It is also about a young woman’s feelings on being reared without a father.
Apart from the fact that the themes of Mcdevitt's novels revolve
around family, family values, divorce, single parenthood, their central characters are all women.
"My main characters are women because I write
in the first person and a lot of writers don't write in the first person. I think because I write in
the first person I am more comfortable writing it as a woman. And in writing in the first person
you get the most intimate details--like brain details and other kinds of details--about the person.
You are not surmising something about them, you become them. So I think that is why my main characters
are all women."
Mcdevitt’s heroine, Emma, is a lovely character; passionate, romantic,
addictive, sensitive, adventurous, joie de vivre. Somehow, the reader gets the impression
that McDevitt is writing from the inside. Is Excess Baggage autobiographical? Do Emma and
McDevitt have anything in common?
"The truth is that if you put the three books together and read
the three of them you will realise that I couldn’t be all three of these women, but half of
me is in all of these women, there is no doubt about that. I mean, I can try and say, oh no,
it’s nothing to do with me at all, but the reality of it is that each of them must be
part of me because I am the one who wrote them; I invented them; I made them up, and I
must have made them up with some little part of me.”
She insists, though, that if she wants to be adventurous,
it is wonderful that, though she can’t carry out some of her adventurous, she can make somebody
else to carry them out for her. But that does not mean she agrees with everything they do
with their children.
“And the funny thing about these characters as well is that
you make them from something inside yourself, but you make them to such a point that they are
characters of their own. So you will know if that character is capable of murder, or the character
is capable of doing something and you will say, 'Oh no, they can’t do that; they are not capable of
doing that.' You will know when the writing is wrong. So the only time you know
the writing is right is when the character does what is right for them.”
Typical of romance novels is that romantic love is central to
its plot and motivates the narrative action, and that its ending is emotionally satisfying and
optimistic, particularly to the protagonist. Excess Baggage follows this stereotypical
narrative pattern. Is it appropriate to describe McDevitt as a romance writer?
“I think that in the book there is romance because life is a mixture.
It would be very hard to go through that many pages implying that somebody didn't want romance.
And these women are all very sexy women anyway. It would be strange for them not to have a bit of
romance in their lives and they all like romance…But I wouldn’t just say I was a romance writer
because if I was just a romance writer I would leave out all the other aspect of their lives that
you wouldn't like if you were just reading romance. So, I don't know what category I fit into but
it is not just romance.”
The narrative landscape of Excess Baggage is laden with
images of sex and sensuality. The reader is tickled and aroused at every turn by this character,
this single parent, with so much appetite or craves for sex. Who nearly has sex so often but never
does. The nearest the reader gets to witnessing the real act of sexual intercourse is between Julia
and Dylan at the hotel, but then this is creatively kept outside the narrative margin. How did she
do it? How is McDevitt able to divest sex from a novel that is imbued with images of sexuality?
“It's not as if I avoid sex because in Sign’s On and
Handle with Care,
I do write about sex. But in this particular novel [ Excess Baggage] there was so much sexual
tension throughout, even with the way he even took off his clothes, the very fact that she noticed
how he took off his clothes, that by the time I got to writing the actual sex part I was saying to
myself it's not going to happen here because the moment isn’t right. So Emma told him she nearly
slept with her ex and low and behold everything flew out the window and the moment was gone. It’s
not that I would avoid the sex, or anything like that, but in that particular instance, Emma was
so wanting to have sex actually, but in the end it was right for her not to in those particular
circumstances and it just leaves the reader wanting more. Wanting to turn the page to see what
happens next. It would really spoil the book and her story if she had sex then.”
That is to say that before sitting down to write Mcdevitt
did not tell herself that in this particular novel she was not going to let her main character
have sex?
“No, absolutely not.”
How then does Mcdevitt approach her writing? Does she set out with the
story or character?
“The Character. Emma was in my head and so I started writing about
her. And funny enough, I never knew until I got to the part where they were in Alex’s art studio,
I never knew that Julia was going to get mad with the paintings and blame Alex for having a picture
of her all those years and she
| "I do owe it to my readers
to give them a good story and believable characters, characters that can teach them about life and
characters that can make them forget, maybe, about their own problems for a few hours, or may be,
for a life time."
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had nothing of him. And when I wrote it I actually felt awful for her. But it's all coming from
the inside of me. But these characters are so separate to me when I’m writing them that I feel
everything they feel for them, as if they were my friends. If one of them walked up to me now I would
be able to point her out. To me my characters are real. I have to do a lot of research though. For
Excess Baggage I had to visit an amazing Italian island. For Handle with Care I had to
have a divorce. For Sign’s On I had to do very intensive research on having a fling with an
Italian stallion.”
McDevitt is a sensitive writer who, by her use of short,
sparse and musical sentences, creates a very unique narrative. Is there a particular reason why
she writes this way?
She was emphatic in her, “No. I never started to ‘style’ my writing,
if you like. That was all an accident.”
But when McDevitt actually started writing she was worried for a
while. She thought, "God, I don't see any other writers using one word sentences. I see these big,
long flowery sentences, lovely sentences and everything is so beautiful and here I am writing these
sparse sentences." So at a workshop that was led by the playwright, Marina Carr, McDevitt told Marina
that she seemed to be writing in these short sentences. Marina asked her if she had ever read a writer
called Lorrie Moore and she said no. She then Marina told her to read Birds of America.
“And I open Birds of America and it's fantastic. I wouldn’t
ever like to compare myself to Lorrie Moore, but she has sentences that were just one word. So from
then on I never looked back.”
In the main, McDevitt's writings, whether it is a short story or a novel,
explicate the female experiences in their struggle for survival in a patriarchal society: Sign's On
deals with physical and psychological abuse. Handle with care deals with divorce and Excess
Baggage deals with single parenthood. They all explore the themes of gender, sexuality, absentee
fathers, divorce and all other social relations that border on feminist tempers. Also, all her central
female characters operate within a feminized narrative space, a gendered space in which, it appears,
men are either not allowed to venture into or are brought in for ridiculing and abuse.
Is McDevitt a feminist?
“No is the definite answer to it. I love being a woman and I love being
treated like a woman and I love men. I think sometime feminism is used nearly as a dirty word and I
think we’ve lost the true meaning of it. So I am not a feminist in the way it is being bandied around
nowadays. However, I do hugely believe in the women’s rights. I hugely agree with equal pay for equal
work. I hugely agree with women being able to take contraceptives if they want to, but I love being treated
like a woman. And I like the fact that men are men and women are women. I think that is wonderful.”
Today was my second meeting with McDevitt. The first time was at a
Creative writers' Workshop in the Blanchardstown (Dublin, Ireland) library, which she presided over.
I had waited till the end of the workshop to broach this "disturbing" topic. And I must have chosen
the wrong time. We were only two men at the workshop, all others were women, and the other man had just
left. So I was there, alone, floundering around in the storm of women's fiery eyes and tongues. A particular
woman, elderly, thought that my position on the writings of McDevitt was that of an "unbalanced" critic. But
here, at the all red lounge of Hilton hotel, it was just McDevitt and I. Here, she has got
no hiding place, as they say.
“Perhaps you are propounding this feminist ideology unconsciously?”
“No, I’m not. I’m not because I absolutely love men...”
“That you are a feminist does not mean you do not love men.”
“I know, but that is the perception now.”
"In Excess Baggage, there is this particular scene at the Italian
Island that is highly symbolic and deeply disturbing: Marco is running after Emma starked naked, Ronan
is on one side pulling her on one hand, Danny is pulling her on the other hand and Alex is somewhere
in his studio lusting for her. What is McDevitt celebrating?"
“I’m celebrating life...”
“No...”
“I’m.”
“Why is only Marco naked on the beach, why not also Emma.”
“It is because Marco fancies the drawers off her, but she doesn’t fancy him.
Had it been Ronan she was with maybe Emma would have been the one naked, you don’t know.”
“You are celebrating womanhood, not life.”
“No. I’m celebrating womanhood and I’m celebrating manhood”
“You are a feminist, Jacinta.”
“No, no...I am celebrating womanhood, manhood and life.”
"How do you celebrate life? Do you celebrate life by humiliation?
Man is not being celebrated at all here. Man is being humiliated. Marco, Ronan, Danny and Alex
are symbolic representations of man’s humiliation. I am beginning to think that McDevitt just doesn’t
want to be defeated, really."
“No, it is not that I don’t want to be defeated; I don’t think my
writing is important enough to be that symbolic. [She says it with a deep emphasis.] My writing is
about women, I will agree with you, but it is about the deeper feelings that women have, primarily,
because I am a woman and I write in the first person. And I actually enjoy being a woman. I like being
a woman...There is more to me than labelling me with a feminist writer or with a romance writer,
but I certainly will not label myself that way. And I don’t think people who know me will label me
that way either.”
But why does McDevitt find the word, feminist, so disturbing?
“I don’t like labels, I have to say, even when you asked if I was a
romance writer. I just don’t like these labels.
I think nowadays we tend to get people and put them
in a pigeon hole and say she is a feminist, she’s this, she’s that or he’s the other. I just don’t
like that because we are all a big mixture.
So I think we have to be very, very, very careful when
we are labelling somebody...If you ( Dublin Quarterly) label me, or if the Irish Times labels
me, or if the Northside People labels me, when somebody labels me I have no opportunity to say
that there is more to me than that one word. If you choose one word to describe somebody, you have to
be very careful you have the right word because just saying one word to describing a person leaves out
ninety nine percent of that person. You have to be great with words to describe somebody in one word.
And feminist doesn’t cut it, I don’t think. I think the connotation attached to feminism isn’t as pleasant
as it should be and I think that it is looked upon with some negativity. It is nearly ‘She is anti-male.’
I don’t like it as a word. I don’t think it’s a nice word anymore. I don’t like being pigeon holed and I
don’t like pigeon holing people, either.”
Ho, ho! We have different opinions on the concept of feminism.
She thinks it's all anti-male; I don't. She thinks it's a negative word; I don't. She thinks it's a
dirty word; still I don't. The idea that women have to share the story of their lives, their experiences
as daughters, mothers and housewives so that other women can gather strength from their common experiences,
and are also enriched by the knowledge of the experiences of other women is a positive one. I think this
is what Mcdevitt's writing is all about. I think there is nothing wrong with being labelled a literary
feminist. But then McDevitt just does not like labels. She does not like to be pigeon holed, either.
“What is your philosophy of life?”
“People underestimate happy and when it is there they don’t treasure
the moment of life. People should treasure every moment and take it. Every moment that we have is a
gift and I really do think that it is incumbent on us to embrace the gift and do the best we can with
it. And I think family and friends and loved ones have a huge part to play in everyone's life. I am
not saying that you should be happy to the detriment of everybody else, but that you should recognise
when you are happy. So I suppose that my philosophy of life is to Carpe diem--seize the day”
“How does your philosophy of life reflect your art?”
“I love the fact that somebody can pick up any of my books and after three
or four hours, when they closed the book, would say, ‘God, that was a bloody great three or four hours
I had reading that book.’ I love it. And I love the sheer escapism of it. And I love that it might
make them think. I love too that somebody who is in a situation that one of these women finds herself
in would be able to say, ‘maybe there is a solution to my problem.’ Also, I do owe it to my readers
to give them a good story and believable characters, characters that can teach them about life and
characters that can make them forget, maybe, about their own problems for a few hours, or may be,
for a life time, you wouldn’t know.”
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2004-2006 the Dublin Quarterly--to see familiar things with unfamiliar eyes!
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