Travel to Ireland with Charleen Hurtubise to celebrate her US debut, Saoirse—a moving story of art, memory, and reinvention set on Donegal’s wild Atlantic coast.
Travel to Ireland with Charleen Hurtubise to celebrate her US debut, Saoirse—a moving story of art, memory, and reinvention set on Donegal’s wild Atlantic coast.
Book Gang welcomes Charleen Hurtubise, novelist and artist, to discuss her sweeping and quietly powerful novel, Saoirse. Charleen draws on her transatlantic life, her creative work as an artist, and her deep ties to Ireland and Michigan to bring this immersive story to life.
Set in 1990s Donegal, this immersive novel follows Saoirse Byrne, an artist whose life is transformed when she unexpectedly wins the prestigious Margaret Dowling Art Prize. As fame threatens to uncover long-buried secrets from her Michigan past, Saoirse must navigate a world shaped by Ireland’s social and political change, Catholic influence, and her own search for freedom.
In this layered and moving conversation, we discuss:
📚 Transatlantic Inspirations & Setting: Discover how Charleen Hurtubise’s own transatlantic life—growing up in Michigan, and building a creative career in Ireland—informs the layered world of Saoirse, and why Donegal’s landscape and history were essential to her story of reinvention.
📚 The Art and Craft of Storytelling: Go behind the scenes of Charleen’s writing process, from the novel’s earliest inspirations in true stories of hidden identities to the painstaking assembly of Saoirse’s “literary jigsaw”—a narrative woven from memory, visual art, and the secrets of the past. Learn how her background as both an artist and a writer shaped the novel’s unique structure.
📚 1990s Ireland: Explore the complex realities of 1990s Ireland for women—where issues of freedom, social change, and Catholic influence collide—and how Charleen uses Saoirse’s journey, her art, and her relationships to examine what it truly means to find autonomy, belonging, and a sense of home.
📚 BONUS WEEKLY BOOK LIST: 23 Books About the 1990s
Discover 23 Books About the 1990s with today’s NEW book list! From literary mysteries and coming-of-age gems to memoirs and multigenerational sagas, this collection celebrates the books that capture the decade’s energy, anxieties, and hopes. Browse for free, friends! Patrons will receive a printable book list and a bonus spoiler episode with Charleen.
Meet Charleen Hurtubise
Charleen Hurtubise is a novelist and artist. She is the author of The Polite Act of Drowning, published in Ireland and the UK in 2023. Saoirse is her US debut. She holds an M.Sc. from Trinity College Dublin and an MFA in creative writing from University College Dublin, where she has facilitated creative writing seminars. The sixth sister in a family of nine, she spent much of her childhood in Michigan, her early adult years in Boston, and has now lived half of her life in Ireland, which is home. Though she lives in Dublin with her Irish family, the pull of Donegal never leaves and continues to influence her drawings and writings, including Saoirse.
NEW: Download the 2026 Summer Reading Guide (57-Pages of Bookish Fun With 70 Tried-and-True Recommendations)
NEW BOOK LIST: 23 Books About the 19990s to Read Right Now (FREE TO BROWSE ON PATREON THIS WEEK)
2026 MomAdvice Book Club Books (All 12 Selections)
Saoirse by Charleen Hurtubise
The Polite Act of Drowning by Charleen Hurtubise
Pope John Paul II Becomes the First Pope to Visit Ireland
Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Poor by Katriona O’Sullivan
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Book Gang Podcast Transcript:
Charleen Hurtubise (00:00)
Hi. My name is Charleen Hurtubise and I am here to discuss my new book called Saoirse
Amy’s Warm Introduction:
Hey, Book Gang! If you have a deep desire to transport yourself elsewhere right now, Charleen’s debut, Saiorse, is a must this summer on audiobook, where Ireland comes to vivid life through her immersive storytelling in this quietly powerful story of reinvention.
Readers are swept straight into the 1990s as Sarah, frazzled and unprepared, boards a flight to Ireland—determined to put an ocean between herself and the secrets of her Michigan childhood. Once in Ireland, she’s built a new life as Saoirse, a name that rolls like the tide and means freedom. On Donegal’s wild coast, she paints, raises two daughters with her supportive partner, and breathes easier—or at least tries.
But Saoirse’s life changes radically, and unknowingly, when she wins the prestigious Margaret Dowling Art Prize, which recognizes emerging artists worldwide. When she opened her first solo exhibition in 1996, she was unaware that she could be considered for the prize or that she might receive a life-changing sum. Her exhibition, featuring a collection of eight pieces, oil paintings, and other mixed media selections, tells an intriguing story and brings reporters and admirers to her door, now hungry for answers about the enigmatic artist from the edge of the Atlantic who captivates its judges.
Her story unfolds in layers for the reader, each revealed through her artwork: haunting images and evocative pieces that serve as windows into the life she believed she’d left behind. The audiobook’s lilting music enhances these artistic transitions, inviting us to linger in each chapter of her past as her work and memories merge.
As fame knocks on her door, she must finally tip her house of cards as she fights to hang on to the new life she has created in Donegal.
Charleen weaves fascinating details about Irish values—especially the influence of the Church on marriage and reproductive rights—throughout the novel, often highlighting these contrasts in conversations with American perspectives where things like drive-through divorces and easy access to contraception are the norm. The 1990s setting not only brings these issues to the forefront but also makes it entirely believable for Sarah to vanish and reinvent herself, revealing just how much time and place shape the choices women can make.
The contrast between Saoirse’s two great loves, in this story, couldn’t be more striking. There’s Daithí, the gentle Donegal partner who offers her the kind of steady, unconditional love—and safe, joyful home—she never imagined was possible. And then there’s Paul from her past, whose relationship is tangled in manipulation and the wounds. As the story shifts between Michigan and Ireland, these men come to symbolize two very different kinds of love: one built on fear and secrecy, and one rooted in trust and belonging.
Readers who love slow-burning suspense will have much to love in this week’s featured novel, which is recommended for fans of Claire Keegan. I’m so excited to welcome Charleen, a gifted novelist and artist, to discuss her sweeping, quietly powerful novel and to hear more about how she draws on her transatlantic life, her creative work as an artist, and her deep ties to Ireland and Michigan to bring this immersive story to life.
To celebrate Charleen’s novel, I have put together a fun book list you can browse for free on Patreon today featuring 23 Books About the 1990s. Patrons receive a printable book list and a bonus spoiler chat with Charleen in their inbox today.
If you’re new here, hi! I’m Amy Allen Clark, the voice behind the Book Gang podcast, and I’m so happy to have you. This show celebrates debuts, backlist favorites, and under-the-radar book gems. It is a delight to continue my full immersion into the 2026 Summer Reading Guide this year as we celebrate some of my favorite books from this year’s guide.
This special guide is available for purchase, offering a handpicked collection of 70 carefully selected titles—upcoming releases, buzzy debuts, and new-to-me backlist treasures (like this one)—across 57 pages designed to help you build your perfect summer stack. You will receive it as an instant download for $7, and that purchase allows us to keep our lights on at Book Gang.
This month’s book club selection we will be celebrating is Woodworking by Emily St. James. This moving debut explores trans identity and self-acceptance, set in a small town in South Dakota, and is a perfect pick to celebrate Pride Month. Join us for our Zoom discussion on June 25th at 8 PM ET—membership is just $5 a month, with a 10% discount for annual signups.
Now, let’s meet this week’s guest: Charleen Hurtubise is a novelist and artist. She is the author of The Polite Act of Drowning, published in Ireland and the UK in 2023. Saoirse is her US debut. She holds an M.Sc. from Trinity College Dublin and an MFA in creative writing from University College Dublin, where she has facilitated creative writing seminars. The sixth sister in a family of nine, she spent much of her childhood in Michigan, her early adult years in Boston, and has now lived half of her life in Ireland, which is home. Though she lives in Dublin with her Irish family, the pull of Donegal never leaves and continues to influence her drawings and writings, including Saoirse.
If you enjoy the show, please consider leaving a review on iTunes—it’s a quick, free way to support what we do. And to our patrons who keep the lights on at Book Gang: may you always have the best armchair travel escape in your book stack. Thank you for supporting human creators in a world turned upside down by AI. Now let’s get chatting!
Amy Clark (00:07)
All right, listeners, I am so excited to welcome Charleen to Book Gang and to talk about this gorgeous debut, Saoirse which is so beautiful. I thought for our icebreaker, I noticed that you lived both in the US and Ireland. And I just wanted to hear like how this town in particular is really allowing you to explore something creatively with your writing life as well, Charleen.
Charleen Hurtubise (00:35)
Right, where she lives in Donegal. Do you mean, yeah. yeah, I came over here about 27 years ago and, you know, obviously fell in love with the place and stayed on and have raised my family here. But I live in Dublin, I live in the city. And whenever I get the opportunity, I go out west to Donegal. And it is the most beautiful, peaceful area that I know of that anywhere I’ve ever been. And I just think it's because they have hundreds of miles of shoreline and the ocean and a big county, but it's not hugely populated. So there's always a bit of privacy. You have these beautiful beaches. Some of them have kind of won like National Geographic top beaches in the world, but nobody's on them.
First of all, probably because of the weather, it's a little bit cooler here. And the other thing is that there's just so many miles of coastline. So it's a beautiful place to go to relax and to paint and to read and write. It has just always captured my imagination in terms of a place that is, you know, just a lovely place to be. So I knew I'd be inspired setting part of it there, you know. And having somebody like Dáithí, you know, the kind of the romantic interest, kind of sweep her away to a place like this, you know.
Amy Clark (02:00)
My gosh, you know that my little Hoosier heart is very excited about where we're going. We only have corn here and we do go to Michigan for the beaches, but I'm sure it does not compare to what you are talking about with this quiet, secluded space and what it offers to people who may visit. I felt so transported by this story and I'm really excited to talk about how the seeds of this story began. Can you tell me a little bit about this story and how it all started for you?
Charleen Hurtubise (02:34)
So, yeah, so the idea of the story came in various threads. I knew that I wanted to write about an artist I had discovered in the middle of COVID. I was taking a painting class and was an online class. I was in Dublin and the class was in London. And so the instructor was giving all sorts of kind of slides onto the screen and most of them were UK writers. And he came across Joan Eardley and she popped up on my screen and her work with children, she painted children in Glasgow and then she painted landscapes and whatever it was, this has never happened. I love art. I've been to so many museums. I’ve been to, you know, I do love it and I have a little practice myself, but there was something about this artist that just reached out and grabbed me and grabbed my attention.
So I started looking into her and I thought, I'll base the next book. Cause I had just, I think I was just getting started with Saoirse. I had the idea about Michigan and this murder. You know, I had this idea. But the other thread was like, okay, who is she? Who is Saoirse? And then this idea of her being an artist came directly from that. But then the final kind of thread came with…
There are all sorts of things happening here in Ireland over the years. And for whatever reason, even in the early 2000s, where people who have needed to escape some situation have come to Ireland and kind of flown under the radar, weren't detected. They might've done something in their own country. I'm not talking about immigration or refugees or anything like that. I'm talking about somebody who came to hide and get away from something.
So it's happened on a number of occasions and it's not just one thing, it's the many times it happened, kind of played to my imagination. I thought, if this is happening nowadays, what about in the early 90s, which is when I landed here, when there was no technology the way it is pervasive now. So there was no technology. And I thought, how would this look?
And then, you know, and slowly one thing after the next came on, she won an art prize? What does she start getting attention for? This work which she had never intended making it so public, you know, and never expected in her wildest dreams that would have bring her to that place. And then, you know, it caused her all sorts of trouble. So it was a number of those threads. Yeah. Yeah.
Amy Clark (04:59)
Yeah, I love hearing about this. So you have this really fun inventive idea to take her on this, you know, harrowing adventure, frankly. I would love to hear how long did the drafting process look like? What does plotting this story look like for you? And also securing a book deal because you had some nonfiction writing in your background. Is that correct?
Charleen Hurtubise (05:22)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely some essays and some newspaper articles and some poems and, you know, different things that I tried. And I actually had a book before. My debut was actually over here in Ireland and UK. It was called The Polite Act of Drowning. And that just took me forever to get published. Absolutely forever to get published. So and then it never got picked up in the US. So it was both exciting and was a disappointment. I was always kind of trying to see, push it and to see where it could go and how far it could go. So was the first part of the question?
Amy Clark (05:59)
Yeah, how long did it take to complete this initial draft?
Charleen Hurtubise (06:02)
How long? So this particular one, so I was already playing with the story when I was still trying to get that so I never really plot, I kind of get myself into trouble. took about a year, all in, like I said, these ideas started dropping during COVID and it took about a year and a half to kind of get a really good solid draft. But I had already been looking to get my other piece of work published.
When I, Ireland is a really, really small community. So once I started talking to other authors and kind of making connections there, they just started recommending, my agent's this way or my agent's that way. And usually they can put you in touch. it was nice. It was easy. so my agent would be Grania Fox and she was in New York and I knew she would be a really good one to work with, and especially to get the second book if I wanted, you know, to get it into America, which was kind of the goal since it was my initial home. I really wanted to have it go to the US.
So this is my US debut, Saoirse.
But yeah, so and then the other part of that question was, what does that process look like? Yeah, no, I don't plot and then I get myself into terrible trouble. And I have all these threads happening and, it is really like art and really like Saoirse's art. It's taking the chaos and making some order out of that. And I have a very, very messy process. I'm jealous of people who are like outlining it and stick with that.
Amy Clark (07:34)
Yeah, I have both kinds of writers that come through the show and I'm always intrigued by each person having such an individual process. I'm wondering, do you think that with the success of this US debut that maybe that first book that you had been hoping would make its way to the US might make it over here? Do you think?
Charleen Hurtubise (07:54)
Yeah, I would love that. I would absolutely love that. it is something that we have, I think we brought it up once, but it is something that I probably need to look into. It's just been so busy with Saoirse and getting Saoirse across the line and just getting it out there and doing things like this podcast. I haven't even turned my head to that. But I should, shouldn't I? I really love that first novel. It's entirely set in Michigan. So I have these coastal themes. It's set on the Great Lakes and I always do feel like I'm writing about these girls. They're not the same girl, but they're always kind of in this dilemma where they need to get to a place of safety. I always seem to be writing about the survivor.
And this third one that I'm now here working on is no different. It's a little bit different in terms of the situation and the gender and the etc. But I am always seem to be getting these young people to safety. I find it interesting. I find it very interesting. I'm questioning my own process. I don't know why. So
Amy Clark (08:55)
Hmm. Yes. It's funny. Yeah, you never know because I feel like a lot of writers come through and they say, well, I never intended to write historical fiction or I never knew that I was always writing about women's health history or, you know, these little themes start to have conversations with each other and all your books seem to be in conversation.
Charleen Hurtubise (09:15)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's strange how that starts to happen. But no wonder, you know, I guess it's, I always say it is my emotional landscape. I am familiar, you know, it's fiction, but I wouldn't be unfamiliar with the settings or the, you know, economic situations or, you know, just or the trouble of adolescence. So, you know, there is no wonder, but it is interesting when you start to see how this is going.
Amy Clark (09:45)
Charleen, take us back to the day that you found out that you got a book deal. I want to hear about it. Did you do anything special to celebrate what that looked like for you?
Charleen Hurtubise (09:54)
Yeah, so do you mean this Saoirse in particular? It's funny because it was getting to be late at night, because it's five hours earlier in the States. And I think we had been going back and forth with a few different people who were interested. So by the time it was firm and by the time kind of that last offer was in, it was, think about 9 or 10 o'clock at night. And I think I was heading to bed with a book and I don't think I expected to hear about it until at least the next day. And I can even see the lighting in my room because I just had my reading lamp on and I was just kind of starting to get cozy. I got a phone call saying, can you have a quick chat? And I was absolutely, yes, I can.
And so I was delighted. just, was absolutely delighted and so thankful and grateful. You know, my agent is brilliant and, you know, kind of went through a few of the details and then I just, I think I hung up and got into bed and read and smiled. I think my kids were even sleeping. I couldn't go and tell them or wake them up, but lots of smiling and lots of, you know, excitement. Yeah, so it is. It's a nice feeling. It's a great feeling, isn't it?
Amy Clark (11:07)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I love hearing about it. Yeah, you do. I know that debut journeys can be sometimes long, sometimes short. Do you have any advice for anyone who may be on this adventure themselves? What have you learned from this process?
Charleen Hurtubise (11:09)
You work so hard for that. Yeah, it is. I am so impatient anyway. Like that is just my nature. And like in the book I'm writing now, just, you know, so, so I'm just in the door with it. I'm like, come on, like, come on, come on, come So I would say, to gain some patience, if I'm talking to my own self back, you know, a couple of years ago, it is a long, it's a long game, you know, it is a very, very long game. And I do see that now.
I guess, take the time it needs. And people do say that and you read that all the time. I am saying that with the new novel that I'm now writing. Like take the time because even as I look back, I think, gosh, would I have gone one more iteration of this? Would I have changed this or would I have? And I think you could say that. You could go through it 20 times and you'd always find something.
And I think because I'm moving on to something new, maybe I look back and think, ⁓ but I think now, like even my advice to myself and anybody else is, yeah, take your time. Like don't be in a rush. That's the main thing, but, keep at it, keep at it. So I always say, I think you eventually find the thing you need to write about if you keep going.
Amy Clark (12:38)
Yeah, I can see how you want to get it done, you want to be on the other side of it, you want to move to the next project and there is so much like hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait with this whole process and maybe settling into that season instead of fighting it so much will be good advice for people to hear.
Well, let's talk a little bit about your inciting incident for all of this to kind of take off, which is fame, which I thought was so smart, right? We're starting with fame as the thing that's going to propel this story. Why did you decide to start with her like that being a threat instead of a reward necessarily for this character?
Charleen Hurtubise (13:10)
Mmm. You know, it was one of the very first scenes I thought about and wrote about that threat. And it wasn't always gonna go at the beginning or the opening of the novel, but it was one of the first things I thought about, because it did up the stakes and upped the tension. Otherwise you just have this young woman living in Ireland painting, she had to have, you know, there has to be something that I thought.
I was also, so when I discovered Joan Eardley, initially she was going to have won a residency and she was going to go away and fly over to the UK and take up this woman's cottage and paint where she painted. That was initially what it was going to be about and kind of a reincarnation thing. And the threat there was, the whole idea was she wouldn't be able to take it without threat of getting discovered, you see. So it started off with her leaving the country.
And then it just, there's this prize over here and I think it appeals to every writer's imagination. It's Campbell Prize, I think it's called. Where like, you, out of the blue, there's no process. You don't even know you're being considered. And these are for very literary writers, by the way, and nonfiction and things like that. But it does appeal to the imagination. Like, what if you were just to land at 130,000 euros to do or dollars or whatever it is just follow your bliss for a year or two? What would that be like? So that then appealed more than her going over to this residency.
You know, the first draft, it might not have even been in the first draft, these things, but all of a sudden they all just, the pieces start to come together and they start making sense. And one decision in chapter, you know, 20 will kind of impede on, you have to go back and thread it back through. but I felt there had to be some, something had to be at stake and what would that be? Her leaving the country or her winning a prize.
And then again, when I landed on the prize idea, the fame of that and the interest in her all of a sudden did up the stakes more so than her going away to a quiet little retreat.
Amy Clark (15:39)
I do love both of those ideas though, by the way. Like I do see how, you know, this could incite something for her. And I loved the idea that the thing that should feel like a reward actually is the thing that opens up this whole book for us to be able to both understand her past and then move through these art pieces and see her exhibit through the eyes of the way that you are writing it for us, which is so like immersive. I cannot get over how good your audiobook was. I mean, have you listened to your audiobook?
Charleen Hurtubise (16:14)
I did, Róisín Rankin is the audiobook artist and she just has the most beautiful voice. She has the most gorgeous voice, doesn't she? And I got to listen to samples you know, before they made a decision and I got to weigh in and absolutely hands down, there was no choice there. She is just a beautiful reader. Her accents, she does so many different accents. Like she is stunning the way she carries it. Absolutely stunning.
Amy Clark (16:41)
Yeah, it felt so immersive and it has these like audio cues too with music, which I will say music in general, I'm like, no, but in this case, I was like, I like this. I know I'm transitioning into art pieces. It was so thoughtfully done. Did you get to have any input in that or did they come up with that concept themselves?
Charleen Hurtubise (16:59)
No, it was a complete surprise. So when I did listen to it, I was so blown away by it. And I thought it was just such a nice way to mark the change and, as you say, the transition between, because it also switches there from third person to first person as well. And the time shift and...
Amy Clark (17:07)
Yeah, yeah, it was incredible.
Charleen Hurtubise (17:23)
I do think reading it, when you have the book in front of you, you can go back a page, go, wait a minute, what just happened there? I get it, okay. Or you see the artist titles, like in a museum, do you know the way it will say oil and canvas? And so you might not get it as well if you are just listening to this. And so I felt that was such a good indicator that something was changing.
Amy Clark (17:33)
Yes. Yes, I had your paper copy in front of me and then I did the audiobook with it, which I would actually advise readers to do it that way because I was absolutely loving it but also able to highlight elements of the mixed media experience that we're going through to be able to kind of see and tap into clues and aspects of her past that really pull into the modern timeline we're gifted as well. So I just loved how immersive this was.
Charleen Hurtubise (18:13)
Thank you. Thanks very much. Yeah. And thanks to Róisín because, you know, wow, she is stunning.
Amy Clark (18:19)
Yeah, well the 1990s, which is very familiar to me, was so wonderful to get to explore through here. I know that, you know, even though it feels like yesterday, it is quite far away and I'm wondering if you had to do any research about, you know, the history of that decade and how you wanted to continue to make it a contemporary setting but immerse people in in the 90s itself.
Charleen Hurtubise (18:23)
Yeah, well to me it doesn't feel that long ago. I can't get over that. Yeah, exactly. It's, you know, the seventies, they were a long time ago, but the nineties were just, I just came out of that era, I think part of the thing is I had three kids and so like they just, they warped time. And so when I'm looking back, I'm thinking, wow, is it that long ago? So to me, like I was there.
Amy Clark (18:48)
Same. I'm like, that was like yesterday, right? Yeah. Right.
Charleen Hurtubise (19:11)
I did the research by living it, you know, like, and that is, again, that's the time I came over. I had a lot of, I have a lot of memories of those moments and I use a lot of kind of historical markers in it of things that actually happened, especially when I was over here, just because I remember where I was, like, for example, when Lady Diana when she was in a car wreck in Paris, you know, I just kind of brought it's definitely not a major part of story, but it definitely makes up the texture of that. Even how things were, you know, I think I think people were smoking on my first flight over on Aerolingus when, though I was 18 the first time I came over here. So that was a few years before the 90s. Well, no, it was just the beginning.
But even the historical context of the laws and the policies and the amendments that have had to be made to the Constitution since like there was no divorce when I landed here. You were married and that was, I had cousins in the 80s who said we don't get married until like our late 30s, 40s just because there's no getting out of it. It's a life sentence. It was a life sentence.
And there were so few options, you know, what really caused problems. That, you know, and that brings up a lot of the tension in story as well, but also the abortion rights and, you know, just even reproductive rights and female, health, they were non-existent in terms of birth control and, certainly, you know, abortion wasn't available and people who had to travel, there were so many restrictions. Yeah, so these are very real things that Saoirse faced that people were, women were, trapped by in the years. You know, it's not, this is not something I made up, you know, like this is something that was law when I initially landed here and arrived here. And the Catholic Church had such a hold on and also people's attitudes and yeah, the power balance between these different institutions. So I arrived in a very different country than we're living in now, which is interesting because I left a very different country than you're living in now.
Amy Clark (21:17)
Yeah, it is interesting. Right now we're living in some kind of country that we're not enjoying so flip-flops.
I guess yeah it's so fascinating to me and I think one of the ways that you really bring all that to life is you know sometimes when writers embed these kinds of aspects to stories they can feel a little bit forced or you know, I have to like inform them, info dump information into it. But it's really embedded so naturally between the characters like at the dinner table when we're talking about how marriage is a life sentence.
One of the things that she talks about is that Vegas has drive through like divorce and marriage right? So you're like I'm done with this like I can just go through a drive-through and everyone's like astounded by this kind of information and then talking about how you know they don't want to get married and I think those kinds of conversations really enhance things because it really gives us a sense of how she's coming from very progressive kind of background to this place where things feel a bit more fixed.
Charleen Hurtubise (22:29)
Absolutely, I think one of the things, you know, I think people made very careful, careful decisions. And one of the red flags for her should have been that Paul, do you know her kind of initial person, was almost so desperate to be in a relationship, you know, and he had been engaged a few times and his friends were kind of making fun of him.
And she doesn't get to see, because she's landed in this kind of honeymoon of a place where things feel a little bit safer than the situation she left and everybody seems so charming and they're talking and trying to impress her and you know, just cause she's, you know, she's passing through and transitioning through, she doesn't realize the true character of him. And it's when you start to see him develop through his friends and how he actually is, think that is the red flag she missed, though she starts to pick up on and then it's too late by the time she, you know, gets a true understanding of who he is.
Amy Clark (23:32)
Yeah, I know. I loved that element. You know, there is one thing that I really latched onto that I want to talk about because I always love learning about other countries and their traditions. You know, when she and Paul arrive, one of the hurdles for her to get a hotel room is that there's something called the Youth Jamboree going on and she can't get a room. Can we talk about the Youth Jamboree? Because I think this is like one of those things where people will be like, what? Like, what are you talking about? Unless there are some very highly educated like American listeners I had never heard of Youth Jamboree. Tell me about it.
Charleen Hurtubise (24:06)
Okay, so this is where I took a license. This is a little bit of fiction, okay? There's two things that kind of blended here. So sorry if this is kind of spoiling it for you, but that was not a historical moment in that year. And I'll tell you why I made this decision. There is a big scouting jamboree, you know, where scouts, scouting is a huge thing over here. And there's a big European sense of it. So like my kids would go off to, you know, they've been to different places, know, Guernsey Island and they've gone, you know, other Scouts have gone to Germany or Germans will land here with their scouting trips. So there's this idea of Jamborees.
But I do think there is a Catholic Jamboree where the youth do come together. And I think it happened one year in Denver. And I do, I think the seeds of it were here in Ireland. I think that maybe they had some sort of, I don't know, some sort of conference and then out of it came this, But what I really wanted to do, what I really wanted to do in the timeline did not sort it. And this is why I kind of settled on the Jamboree. There was a year that the Pope came and I was in the 80s or the late 70s. And the country, everybody in the country came into the Phoenix Park. I mean, like 75 percent of the I didn't do any research on the bits, like a huge percentage of the population converged on Dublin. And you would have had to stay with your auntie. would have had, like there would have been, you know, it's hard to get, it was hard to get a room if there's like, say, you know, some big match on or whatever.
But when the Pope came to Catholic Ireland, forget it. Like, so my husband, his, like his family would still have remnants. They made like these Pope stools because they all, he, you know, I think they ended up walking into Dublin. They lived, you know, a couple miles from the city center. They walked into this park and if you look at the, go back and look at the scenes of this, it was a major, major event. That's what I actually wanted to set it, but the timeline did not suit me. So that is where I took some historical license. But it's fun because I haven't talked about that before because that was, but I think this was, that was such a huge moment, the Pope's visit. And then I thought, can I bring the Pope's visit up? And I thought, no, no, we'll just give it something else like this. But those are true things. Those are true things. Whether it was as big as that she couldn't get a hotel room or well a hostel. I don't know.
Amy Clark (26:29)
Well, you know, my husband and I have a very infamous road trip we took where we were leaving. He had a job in Seattle and we had to go from Seattle to Indiana and we cross countryed it and it was our first, like we weren't married yet. I don't even know if we were engaged. Maybe we were engaged at that point, but we're driving all the way across and it never occurred to us because we actually didn't know where we would land to get a hotel room, you know?
So you go on these trips and it turns out that there were two major things happening the weekend that we were driving. One being the Harley Davidson convention, which had brought in like hundreds of thousands of people, right? And no hotel rooms were available. And then also a state fair that we did not know existed. And so we could not get a room. And it was the most nightmarish trip. And we talk about it still. And you know, you never know when little things like that pop up. So I was just reminded of a trip that I did where, you know, these very random like festivals or like events are happening and you're like, there's no room at the inn Like, what is going on here?
Charleen Hurtubise (27:42)
That's it. It's plausible. You see, it's plausible.
Amy Clark (27:50)
Well, I loved asking you about that. Obviously, yes.
So there is a huge Catholic influence on this story. And I know that you had discussed a little bit that there were some limits on contraceptives. I didn't realize that this was still happening in the 1990s, especially for women that were like navigating their own independence and relationships. Were you surprised by any discoveries other than beyond what you knew to be your own story when you came?
Charleen Hurtubise (28:21)
Just in terms of those kind of policies and things like that. I think the main, already contraception was, had been passed. And so that had been here for a few years by the time I got here, but I knew it was in their recent past. But I remember being, I remember where I was and who I was with when they told me there was no divorce, because there was still no divorce in the country. And I was sitting with some friends, we were all in our early twenties and they said, they told me about the divorce thing and I was just blown away. And because of that, like the drive-through, was like, wait, what? Those were the main things.
And they had this woman, Mary Robinson was the president. And I just so admired her because she really was such a supporter of women's rights. And she really went to bat for women in this country and she became the first woman president of the country, followed by another amazing woman. It just was a big moment here in Ireland when I landed.
The Celtic tiger was kicking off where it had just really been this backwater of Europe and everybody was trying to leave the country and all of a sudden they were starting to see prosperity for the first time. And it was after the horrendous 80s that there's so much poverty and heavy taxes and no jobs and mass, mass immigration, especially from places like Donegal where just a huge percentage of the population had to leave. There was no jobs. And then that all changed. I really came at a time where the country was. I got to see old Ireland shift. And yeah, it really was. I've seen so many changes here. It's really spectacular, you know, to think about that. yeah, it's an interesting country. And it's great. It's a great country. It's fabulous. And it is. And people are lovely and nice.
But it goes so much deeper than just that experience of, you know, there's so many nuances still, you know, just in the social fabric, which is also changing, I think, you know, because of prosperity and because, you know, kind of immigration coming back in this way. And I always felt that we used to go to Toronto a lot when I was a young girl, my father's family was French Canadian and they all kind of migrated down to the cities there, Toronto and then eventually London. We used to go, but I remember I was from a very small town and I went up and we saw, it was just so multicultural and I loved that. I loved that. And now I landed in where there was very few people from anywhere else in the world except for the odd tourists, you know.
It didn't even have a massive amount of tourism back you know, so when I landed in, there wasn't a whole lot of other people living here. was usually the opposite way. You know, people were immigrating to the US or to England or what have you. So anyway, so yeah, so I definitely saw that big change and I love it now. I walk down in Dublin on O'Connell Street and you just see people from everywhere living here and working here and making a life and making things easier for people here too, you know, because the jobs that they're doing and it's just so important that it's opened its doors and it's a sign of prosperity, isn't it? But I always think of Toronto and I think I always feel, you know, like I like that about what's happened to Ireland.
Amy Clark (31:58)
Yeah. I loved too when you like had her move there that they kind of poke fun at her accent and stuff. Did you get to poke fun at yourself a little bit when you were making that transition?
Charleen Hurtubise (32:13)
Yes, they're all corrections, Galway. Or when my family and friends arrive, they're like, I really want to go to Galway. Everybody does it. Or the quays down on the riverside, you'd have the keys, you know, and everybody goes, know, where is merchants quay? Q-U-A-Y. It's key. And you just, you know, or else when I'm picking up my sisters from the airport and they have their luggage and, you know, they go to get in the driver's side and it's just kind of a little bit of fun.
You know, it is, it's a lot of fun to just kind of giggle and go, ha ha. And because I did it too. We all do it. And then you learn and you know, but yeah, it's just a bit of fun, you know. But also, Paul was such a prick. You know, like he would have used that to he would have kept turning that and just like going, you know, like, yeah, you know, he just was such, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Amy Clark (32:47)
Yeah, he was so terrible. He was the worst. He had very pick-me energy. He was too much. He was just too much. He needed to settle down for sure.
Charleen Hurtubise (33:13)
Yeah, settle down is it. Yeah, there's something very off about Paul. You know, I don't know about you, but I've known Paul's in my life. It's not about any particular Paul, you know.
Amy Clark (33:24)
Did you have a hard time writing him? Because you didn't like him?
Charleen Hurtubise (33:26)
I loved writing him. I loved writing him. Yeah, yeah.
Amy Clark (33:27)
You did? Okay, that's good. You can tell when someone loves writing someone who's unlikable. I can tell you have a little bit of love for Paul, even as nasty as he was.
Charleen Hurtubise (33:34)
Yeah, do you know, like he's just, he's just this entitled character. And we, you know, we all know somebody like that, who just feels like, you know, he is owed. And I also think it's a bit of conditioning, though, as well, like this, my son, my son, and I think, you know, mothers are getting a bit better at making sure, you know, there is equality there between the genders and also teaching people responsibility rather than owed. Yeah, so it was, poor Saoirse. He wasn't very fun for Saoirse.
Amy Clark (34:14)
I love that. I know. Well, I want to talk a little bit about the art itself. Can we talk about creating those pieces? What's your art background look like? And how did you want to approach that? Did you separate the pieces? Did you know where you were going? What happened with this end of the medium?
Charleen Hurtubise (34:24)
I had a lot more pieces I had many more kind of, they're almost like soliloquies, aren't they? Or they're just, tableaus or whatever you want to call them. They're these kind of moments of interruption. I didn't know how I was going to tell her story, whether I was going to tell it in a linear timeline or the way it is. I really kind of had a hard time busting up that and how was I going to do these flashbacks?
I tend to, you know, I struggle with the flashbacks and I just early on, I think I just thought, you know, she's an artist. Why not make it into, and I don't know if it's been done before. I haven't seen it done before. So I felt it was pretty novel in order to do that, but it makes sense as well because, as you know, she kept journals, which she didn't tell anybody she kept journals, but it's a very important part of her trauma processing and for her to work through it. And she never intended for it to be discovered. It was a way for her to distract, from her painful memories and from the painful situation she was living in. It was something for her to do.
So I do, I have a very amateur background and I've done, I have had a few exhibitions which I've really enjoyed, but my piece would be more of a nature slant and looking at ecology and environmental stuff. And I painted and did films in the bog lands in the peatlands of Ireland. So it was very, very different from what she was doing. I wouldn't know where to start with that.
I did attempt a little bit at trying to do some of this. I never did it very well. So, but I can imagine what she might do or she might paint and what that might look like. And I have kind of some favorite people who I've, you know, might've had in mind and that sort of, obviously Joan Eardley, who I've mentioned and Una Waters. I've posted this on my Instagram. She just was this painter, I think it was in the late sixties during where, sorry here's another thing, women had to quit work if they got married. That was it. They had to, you know, stay at home and look after the family, like it was written into the law.
And so this woman, this painter Una Waters, she was painting during this time and she had left to post at a library, you know, because she couldn't, it was a civil servant job I think and she had to stay home and she had to give it up.
So that was the decision she had to make in order to marry. So she took up painting, because obviously, you know, what do you do? You sit around and look after the house and you know, so here was a very intelligent woman who needed to do something. So she took up painting and she was very, kind of a cubist and a realist and a futurist, I think, started to kind of dabble in these. Her paintings have only recently come on display here.
In Saoirse's time, they wouldn't have even been available. But when I walk into the National Gallery, which is somewhere Saoirse would have gone to spend time, I think of her coming across a painting like this and just really being inspired by those. Mary Swansea, this sort of work. So I kind of had a feel of what her paintings would look like. Unfortunately, I cannot reproduce them myself, so I have to use my imagination like the reader. But I think describing them or her situation and you might imagine what that might look like. And I have kept journals and that's a big part of it because obviously in the descriptions it's more of a journaling but she might have sketched these different things in these very traumatic situations so they wouldn't make it onto the museum wall but clearly somebody picked up on this on her you know on her work and what was kind of subverted in her work. So, yeah.
Amy Clark (38:27)
The vocabulary and the language and the materials and the color choices, the different types of mediums that you decide to use within these pieces. How do you build that? What does that look like for you as a writer?
Charleen Hurtubise (38:39)
Yeah, again, lots of trips to different places where there is a collective, where, you know, somebody has kind of gathered all the paintings of somebody together over the years and, kind of looking at the textures and their journey. So I did a lot of looking at that. And I also, when I was supported by the Arts Council to go and take a class at the, I had taken a few different things, but in my interest, like charcoal and pastels and that, but I went and took one in painting specifically so I could gain the vocabulary, but it was brilliant because they supported me in doing this for a term. And I really enjoyed that. I didn't have much to show after it, but I did get in there and I saw what other people were doing and they were dabbling in the work.
Amy Clark (39:25)
Did you, okay, so you have paintings that did not land in the book. You still have some drafted versions of pieces hiding somewhere or did they, they, they all did not make it. So you, do you have bonus content somewhere?
Charleen Hurtubise (39:34)
So yes, but in a way they were... So in the editing process, I can't remember how many pieces, are there seven or eight pieces? I'd have to go back and count. But I think there were about 11. And my editor was kind of like, okay, I think we need to move this along. We get the idea and the vehicle, but it's time to just get her to Donegal Or just get her here. know, so I think she had this vision of picking up the pace a little bit. And those do slow it down a bit. I had to pick the pieces that were really important and other pieces. So I don't know if you remember where she has her friend, Catherine, who's really important to her discovery to this, know, she's both problematic and a savior in a way. And she came and was going through her art pieces. And I got to describe them in real time that way.
Whereas before those were each a flashback, like each one of those, the Boston piece and then the different pieces were the road piece. Those were all, I think the road piece still is, but all of those were flashbacks. And I think she just said, can you just, and so I just came up with the idea, just embed that in the text. So you can talk about painting without doing a flashback. You can see what everybody's seeing without that.
Amy Clark (40:40)
Okay. Yeah. I got it. Well, the name Saoirse promises freedom, but I think that this novel complicates that idea. What does freedom actually look like for this character? Do you think?
Charleen Hurtubise (41:06)
Yeah. So, well, I think so when she's named, she's not, she, kind of, that was again, one of the first scenes that I wrote, it's kind of revolving around the romantic interest in the love story. I think this is a love story at its very core. Yeah. And that was the thing that made me want to write it too. And he, because her meeting Dáithí was the, was one of the first things I wrote. In fact, so much actually radiated out of that scene and because they're love and they're just you know that I just felt like that was such a hot moment you know. I have to tell you my one of the readers who who read it in early days and blurbed it, she called him the Mr Darcy of Donegal and I was like people are gonna think I paid you to say that I could not.
I really wanted somebody to kind of make that connection just this absolute gentleman and somebody who knows themselves. And so, you know, so she had this, the scene on the beach, sorry, I'm losing the thread here. And she was, she had, she was high, she was absolutely stoned and silly. And do you know the way there's this tradition here? And I think it's kind of that way in the US, like James would be Jimmy or, you know, everybody's like Jimmy, Billy, Bobby, whatever when you're young, you know, and there is that's here as well. Like somebody who Liam would become Limo or, you know, I said, I knew this guy called Portric or Patrick or somebody and they call them Smiley and he was the most unsmiley man. Clearly it was irony, you know, like, so that happened in her crowd and you can hear it just in the names, you know, the ethical B man and just these people who kind of get named their nicknames.
So she says, to this romantic interest, know, give me an Irish name. And she hadn't intended to use it to distance herself, but it just happened that way. And it became another layer where she could, and the further away she got from this stolen identity, the more comfortable she felt she could feel. So it was one of those layers, like paint, you know, in the way that you do layer painting, it got her a little bit further, a little bit further away from it.
And the idea that freedom and cause he came up with a few Irish names and she says, when he said, I mean, it is a beautiful name, is absolutely beautiful name, but when he said it means freedom, it's kind of like that dream, like, yes, that's what I want. And so it just resonated with her. I really did.
Amy Clark (43:54)
Yeah, I loved that. Well, obviously, I do want to just add a small section here for all the real fans about Dáithí. He is amazing and I love his role.
I think that sometimes in stories we often don't get a good guy. Sometimes we get a lot of mediocre men, we get one terrible man, you know a woman finding herself after dealing with terrible men and it was just refreshing to me that he supported her but also that he allowed her to be who she was. You know and there's no spoilers in this but you'll have to be on the back half if you want to hear about that but I do think that he supported her in every way and showed up in a way that I think women need to see also in literature. Can you talk about making this decision as well for this character?
Charleen Hurtubise (44:42)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because I, yeah, I just felt that, could have gone another way. Part of the draw with him is he also had a very traumatic past, you know, he's also an outsider. He's Irish, but he, you know, he's from a background that wasn't very common at the time.
Just between where his father's origins were in Kenya and his mother's were in, you know, Ireland. So he, you know, was feeling kind of this. So I think they connected over that, but they were both very quiet people. And Saoirse would have been a very, I think, you know, again, I had, you know, this idea of choice. She's coming from a survivor's background.
And had she had the privilege of being from a background that wasn't so compromising, I think she was highly intelligent and she would have been remarkable only she had to climb out of this, you know, these situations slowly. So I think they got each other just at the soul level and they really kind of, you know, filled something in for each other in that they were both struggling to find their identity and who they were and kind of climb out of some traumatic pasts as well. And I always say this about this and I actually forget how much this had, how much this really influenced with Tess of the is that classic that she wants to throw into the fire at the, you know, at one stage in the novel Tess in theD'Urbervilles, this is a spoiler, I'm sorry, it's a classic though, if you haven't read it, it's a harrowing tale. And she didn't get the man that she deserved. And I wanted to change that, you know, I wanted to change that for women.
There are people who do meet their partner, whether it's, you know, a romantic, you know, heterosexual or homosexual or whatever, there are people who do find each other and are supportive. So it's not unrealistic. It's just also that they were very quiet people and kind of let themselves resonate with each other in their own spaces. He was kind of this artisan, you know, always at work on the house. She's this artist always at work on her canvas. And, you know, so there wasn't a whole lot of talk. Probably was probably a very quiet household, I imagine. You know, but they were just comfortable in each other's company and obviously clearly another layer for her was she felt very safe in that.
Amy Clark (47:15)
Yeah, and I think those characters are so important and she had earned that, right? The things that she went through, the people that she encountered, how she was used in a lot of situations.
You know, it's nice that she gets someone like this. And I think that that's what adds balance to a story. If we only have evil men, if we only have things going this way, she still has her independence. This isn't because of a man. It's that she's found independence with a partner who supports her.
Charleen Hurtubise (47:43)
Yeah. Yeah. That's it. And I will say this too. I do feel like we have to remember that, you know, she is coming from the survivor's mentality as well. Do you know? Like, I think that that is the big thing about her. And I wanted to give her, I wanted to give her hope and the chance to kind of climb out of this. She had saved herself on so many levels already, that I just felt she needed, and then yet again, having this, sorry.
It is her story to tell and I know Dáithí isn't perfect.You know, I do kind of hint at a few flaws there, you know, in terms of him bringing up, but it's also you have to remember from her perspective and she just sees this, you know, if nothing else, she can probably overlook and I tell you, have met people who have come up from these situations and you know, they meet these most beautiful people who of course are flawed, you know, but they're kind of devoted to each other. They're really devoted to each other. And this is her tale. This is from her side. And he, you know, has a side as well, which I do kind of plant there. But I think it's really important to remember it's from her perspective. And for her, you know, he could do no wrong. You know, so I'm sure he did. I'm sure he, you know, I'm sure he had his his flaws, but yeah, they were good for each other.
Amy Clark (49:08)
Well Charleen, if people pick this book for their summer book clubs, what are you dreaming of for them to be talking about from this book?
Charleen Hurtubise (49:27)
I think there's so much from it. Again, that survivor's perspective, I think is really, important. And the kind of that moral, you know, that moral gray area is she had to make some decisions and some of them were very good decisions. Some of them were very poor decisions and spur of the moment and survivor mentality and not being able to see kind of further the consequences of that and the hurt that she might have caused.
I will, if you don't mind, I did bring write down this quote, because I think this is so important in terms of where she is coming from in her survival mindset. So this is from another book I highly recommend. This is a nonfiction book by a woman, Irish woman called Katriona O’Sullivan. And she wrote a book called Poor about her upbringing and coming from this type of background, you know, in survival mode, in a background that wasn't safe at all. But so she writes and she has a PhD. And she talks about this a lot now and she writes about this but she talks about choice. So I guess that's that I think that would be a good theme to cover if you were doing a book club. "Choice is a myth inflicted on poor people by people in positions of power. People who can change things prefer to let the underserved feel like they are to blame rather than losing their position and making things fairer."
So, yeah, I just get chills every time I think about that or read it and I think that's so relevant to now, you know, and the things that are kind of unfolding here in the world and in the US and in Ireland and everywhere. And the choice is a myth. And I think for Saoirse, we have to remember that she was in a position and it's nothing enrages me more than when people are like, you know, think Edna O'Brien was a woman who wrote and somebody wrote a newspaper article about her and said, she's still writing about the girl in distress.
It's like, “sorry, still in distress, still happening.” How many assaults or exactly?
Amy Clark (51:35)
Right. Hello, do you live here on this planet Earth?
Charleen Hurtubise (52:00)
I think the day where I went back and reread that, I also read about all the assaults on women in the paper and rapes and murders and by their partners. so, I think the choices that women are put in and especially women of a certain socioeconomical background, I think it's so important that we address that and look at that and, and look at ways, you know, first looking at it, I think is the most important thing. So yeah, so choice and what how much choice did she have? And where would she have ended up? Had she not made some of these decisions, you know, that's a very real thing, consequences.
But also, there's so much to discuss, Paul and his entitled family and the mother and redemption for everybody and
Amy Clark (52:29)
Go, Paul.
Charleen Hurtubise (52:34)
Yeah, I mean, is that a chunk mouthful? I do have a set of questions that my publisher helped come up with pinned on my Instagram. It's called Book Club Kit. So if anybody does decide, I think there's some great, really kind of thoughtful questions there to delve into. which you might not want to look at before. I don't think there's many spoilers, but yeah. So.
Amy Clark (52:36)
Yeah, this is perfect. Yeah, you are giving us so much to work with. I think this is great. Okay. Okay.
Well, this is such a great start for anyone who's thinking about picking this book. We are going to close out this side of the show. We do have a spoiler section for anyone who would like to follow us on the other side. That's behind our Patreon wall. It's $5. It's your reward though for finishing the book. You get to hear how Charleen came to this book's ending and you can follow me over there.
But Charleen, we always end our show the same way. We ask our writers what they're feeling proud of, whether it's with this project or with your writing career in general. And just gives me a chance to say thank you for being on the show. Thank you for coming all the way from Ireland to tell your story to our listeners. I really was just moved by the story in so many ways. I learned so much about Ireland. It was such a great armchair travel escape for me. I am not able to travel right now, but I feel like books like these transport me elsewhere. I just absolutely loved this story. I loved how you played with art and what you taught me about the experience in the 1990s of living through this era as a woman. So thank you for doing that, but I would love to hear what you're feeling proud of right now.
Charleen Hurtubise (54:16)
Thank you. Thank you very, very much for having me on and for all of those thoughts. I am very proud of Saoirse. I'm really proud to have a second book, you know, that I am also, I love The Polite Act of Drowning and I love what it says, you know. I think it's a very different book. So I love actually to see the two on my shelf and thinking I did that. So I'm really, really proud. And now I'm starting to visualize the third one. And I'm really excited about that. I have just this week kind of, as I could say, broke the seal on how I'm going to structure this one, because it's really at the beginning stages.
So, yeah, very proud to think that I'm still at it. You know, I didn't give up because there were many, many a days that I thought, just forget it. But we kept going and I'm proud of that, you know, so and the things I write about and I'm also, you know, I always say like, I love when readers get in touch and say that it's somehow touch them or have a question or I really love that it has started conversations. So thank you for having this conversation. This is fabulous. And you have a fabulous podcast. So thank you so much.
Amy Clark (55:31)
This is lovely. Thank you, Charleen. Well, listeners, I'll meet you over on the other side.
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