Modern Love

It’s telling that, despite the confessional nature of her work, and the fact that her debut collection of short stories has already been picked up in the UK and Italy, Cathy Sweeney doesn’t really want to talk about it.

Whereas someone like the shy and retiring GG would happily spend their days walking up and down the main street to let everyone know that, hey, we’ve written a book, well, young Sweeney would rather let the work do all the talking.

Given the acclaim already splashed across the cover of Modern Times, and the fact that it’s being released here on March 19th by acclaimed Dublin publishers The Stinging Fly, this local teacher-turned-author couldn’t entirely escape the publicity trail.

As witnessed by the lengthy interview in today’s edition of The Irish Times. “Oh, I’m really bad at this,” exclaims Sweeney at the start of the piece, before proceeding to prove over the next 2,000 words that, yep, she’s actually very good at this.

Unsurprisingly, Sweeney digs deep with journalist Niamh Donnelly, darting from Picasso’s weeping woman paintings to Dirty Dancing, from the films of Joanna Hogg to Russian writer Lyudmila Petrushevskaya. The latter a GG favourite. Of course.

Having stepped away from her life teaching English – in Clondalkin, the Institute of Education and, most recently, St David’s – but her growing passion for writing over the past 10 years has now taken over that first love. It was The Stinging Fly who first published one of Sweeney’s short stories, back in 2011, and Sweeney’s work – and reputation – has been growing steadily ever since.

And to her style of writing, author Kevin Barry described it as “a senselessness that makes perfect sense“. Which kinda makes sense.

Touching on a Road To Dostoyevsky moment in her late 30s in today’s interview, Sweeney is quick to dismiss the obligation on artists to reveal their private lives in order to explain – and sell – their work, pointing out merely that she has learnt “at this stage of my existence – I’m going to be 50 this year – that there aren’t right ways to do things. I spent so many years in a desperate struggle to do things right. To have a right job and a right relationship, and a right house, and right kids, and I’ve really ended up with absolutely nothing right“.

We beg to differ. As The Stinging Fly gets ready to publish Sweeney’s debut short story collection on March 19th, it’s off-shoot press, Banshee, are celebrating yet another award-nomination for her daughter, Lucy Sweeney Byrne’s, debut short story collection, Paris Syndrome, released late last year. From the very start, says Cathy of her daughter, “I could see she was so good. My encouragement to her was to put the foot down on the gas and just leave it there…”

With her own short story collection, Sweeney also keeps that pedal to the mental, the mutant, the mischievous, the masochistic, the macho and the emotionally maimed, touching on pretty much all the madness that goes into make-up of, hey, these modern times.

“I come at every story from the position of: ‘it’s just such a flawed mess‘,” finishes Sweeney. “I feel the tenderness of how vulnerable and deeply pathetic we all are.

“The extreme vulnerability is in me, and in the characters, I hope. As well as brutality. Because it’s the full range…”

Modern Times is out on March 19th, and is available here. You can read the full Irish Times interview right about here.