Eoghan Walls is the author of the novel The Gospel of Orla. His other books include the poetry collection Pigeon Songs. Originally from Northern Ireland, he teaches creative writing at Lancaster University.
Q: What inspired you to write The Gospel of Orla, and how did you create your character Orla?
A: We had a bad spate of deaths in the family a few years ago: my mother, my brother’s wife, friends of the family, all in the space of a few years.
During it all my brother used to ask me if I believed in God – which is a very loaded question, when your mother and wife have just passed away. I couldn’t in good conscience give a resounding yes or no; it seemed to me that mourning was urgent and animal and necessary; that some aspects of sorrow, like anger, are somehow under-anticipated by the institutions of death.
And so – out of this – The Gospel of Orla was written. I wanted to conceive of an afterlife that could be adequate to an angry 14-year-old girl. Orla is my response to this.
Q: The writer Kia Corthron said of the novel, “As the troubled teenager ricochets between circus illusion and divine touch, she and the reader are beckoned to ponder where magic ends and miracles begin.” What do you think of that description?
A: It’s gorgeous – the reviewers have been so generous. I often feel sheepish with such responses. I try to write something gritty and dirty and tactile, and I am delighted if others find beauty in it. I think beauty starts in dirt, I guess. The miraculous too.
I guess from poetry I have learned that miracles need to start in the dirt: you need to mix mud with spittle and rub it in a blind man’s eye before he can see: you have to run out of wine at a wedding in Cana before you can open the wine of God.
Q: How would you describe the dynamic between Orla and your character Jesus?
A: Heh. Most readers might find it inappropriate. In her first interaction she threatens him with a knife and calls him an arse; throughout the work, she is cajoling and manipulative.
This is all disgraceful if we extend it to a human being – but if we extend it to a divine force of life, it is not unwarranted. We did not ask for death! We do not want our mothers to contract terminal illnesses. Death is not fair! And the demands that our responses are appropriate, or measured – that’s not fair! It isn’t!
So why should we not rage – should we not be angry? If you could meet the God who allowed brain cancer to take children, would you not be justified in pushing him into a river? Orla does not have the same qualms I might demand of myself.
Q: Did you know how the story would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: I’m a planner: I plan everything meticulously. I mean – initially – I had an idea for five scenes that I wanted in the book: a kid burying Jesus; a resurrected cat; the scene with the Beatles tribute band.
So before I started writing, I tried to string these into a plot, that would answer my thoughts on mourning; I got a chapter plan written down, with the main plot points. The ideas had been circling my head for years, for so long that the actual planning took an afternoon, five sheets of paper and a will to wring them together.
It did take me a few goes to get into her voice – but once I found the voice, the book came pretty readily.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I have another novel set to come out this year – Field Notes from an Extinction – also with Seven Stories. It’s a tale of an English ornithologist during the Irish famine. While he’s taking notes on the final colony of Great Awk, the locals smuggle a dying child onto his outpost. It’s a way of thinking through empire, environmental collapse and immigration.
I also have a book of poems coming out this year too, about the father-daughter relationship – Elsa & the Wolfman – with Seren.
So a high-output year – but of course, these only come with years of dearth between them.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Really just that last bit. It sounds like I have loads going on. And things are working out at the minute. But I go through years of nervous angst where I publish little or nothing, and when I read of the success of others I get overwhelmed by bitterness and frustration.
Are these periods of dearth necessary for our times of plenty? Intellectually I believe it; yes; the thinking we do between books that makes our work visceral and cosmic. Emotionally, I get forlorn and berate myself when I’m at the trough of the sine wave. But I do think these are periods of gestation. I think we as writers should learn to be kind to ourselves.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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