SOPHIE GRENHAM talks to EMILY HOURICAN about growing up in BRUSSELS, her JOURNALISM HIGHLIGHTS and recovering from cancer …
Photograph by Eoin Rafferty
Prior to becoming a bestselling novelist with The Privileged (2016), Emily Hourican was largely known for her successful career in journalism. Emily is also a courageous cancer survivor who received the all-clear last year and has admirably detailed her experience.
Emily first made her mark as the editor of Himself magazine before taking the helm of The Dubliner in its early years. For the last decade, she has been a regular features writer with the Sunday Independent and Image, as well as contributing to Condé Nast Traveller and Woman & Home. The Privileged has been described by the Irish Times as, “A Circle of Friends for the 21st Century.” Emily has also written How to (Really) Be a Mother (2013, Gill), which refreshingly deconstructs the societal pressures of modern parenting. Emily’s own family background is charmingly intricate; she was born in Belfast and brought up in Brussels by her journalist father Liam Hourican, who was from Roscommon, and her Irish-Palestinian mother Patricia Cleary who grew up in Africa. Emily later lived in Italy before studying English and History in UCD.
The author’s scorching new book, White Villa, is a beautifully woven story that explores grief, one’s sense of identity and social ritual. As we observe a student “Holiday of a Lifetime” to Ibiza in part one and meet the characters ten years later in part two, we reflect upon the complications of friendship and family.
Emily Hourican lives in Dublin with her husband David and their three children. She is currently writing her third novel.
White Villa (€16.99) is published by Hachette Ireland and available from all good bookshops.
On home
I live in Mount Merrion, which is extremely leafy. It’s very definitely suburban, with all that that entails, but the number of beautiful mature trees (some people are dog people; I am a tree person) makes up for distance from the city centre, where I lived until we had our second child. More space and a back garden became (sadly) more important than being able to walk into Stephen’s Green. Rocket Foods, on Deerpark Road, is a favourite, because it has great coffee, great food, and great chat. I try not to do much meeting-for-coffee in the mornings, because I find that if I do, I come home feeling giddy and can’t settle to any work, but if I am being feckless – that’s the place I do it!
On roots
I grew up mostly in Brussels, Belgium, where houses are very tall, with huge basements; that felt very mysterious and exciting when we moved there when I was six. Our basement extended right out under the street, and the story was that there was a secret network of tunnels that had been used by the Resistance during the war, to help Belgian Jews escape the Gestapo. I never found the tunnel, but I love the story. There is a smell of wood, beeswax polish and my father’s cigars that will always make me think of that house. The smell of turf fires, and Kerry hedgerows in high summer makes me think of the Ireland I knew as a child, when we would come back here for holidays. I loved that smell. I still get it sometimes, and instantly I’m in the car, rolling off the early morning ferry from Holyhead into a silent Dun Laoghaire.
On creating
I do work from home mostly – often in my pyjamas until I have to do the school pick-up. I work in a large study at the front of the house, which is freezing. I picked it because it’s downstairs – meaning I could keep an eye on the kids when they were younger – but largely unwanted because it is the least cosy of the downstairs rooms. The house faces north-south, so this room gets almost no sun. I did install a stove, to warm it up in the winter, but I usually don’t feel I have enough time to bother lighting it – so in winter, I sit draped in shawls instead. The room has plenty of space, a bay window and nice big bookcases. I’d say it would be lovely if I’d stop monopolizing it, and put in a TV and some sofas…
On bookshops
The Winding Stair bookshop on Ormond Quay always seems to me exactly what a book shop should be. An eclectic mix of books; chosen for love more than anything else, great old editions and the feeling that you might be in an indie film and about to find yourself in A Strange Encounter. There was a second-hand bookshop in Dalkey called The Exchange when I was young that was amazing. I remember a friend of mine, Rebecca O’Donnell, going up there with a shopping trolley full of books she had read, to swap them for a shopping trolley of books she hadn’t read.
On her nightstand
I have The Party by Elizabeth Moss, because three people have told me I’ll love it. I’ve just started it, and so far those three people are right. Also Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, which I’m only managing to read a little of at a time, because it is terrifying, but an object lesson in how to layer detail to create atmosphere. Maggie O’Farrell, a writer I love, is waiting in the wings with I Am, I Am, I Am. Such a nice feeling – knowing where my next great read is coming from!
On favourite escapes
For me, it’s Kerry every time. Specifically the bit from Cahirciveen to Caherdaniel. I have been holidaying here all my life, and it is my go-to for peace, beauty, and air that feels like I can drink it. We go every summer, with my family and various friends with children close in age to ours, and I just love it. For all the amazing places I’ve been to (actually, not that many really – but Transylvania, last year, was fascinating); it’s Kerry I want to come back to again and again. Swimming in Ballinskelligs or Caherdaniel is the best thing I do these days. Beats pubs, clubs and even parties!
On HPV
I am doing brilliantly – truly beyond brilliantly, really. I am free of cancer, and the memory of the treatment has mostly receded. If anyone had shown me myself as I am now back when I was diagnosed, I think I would have hugged them… Maybe I wouldn’t; maybe I’d have been horrified and I’m currently guilty of positive bias – but I don’t think so. I feel amazing – life is full of energy and wonder and interesting things. The advice I would give is the very same as the advice I got from so many wonderful people when I was sick. It’s very simple: “This too will pass.” It will – I didn’t believe it. I didn’t see how something so momentous could simply “pass”, but it did for me, and it will for you. Also – if there is a “good” form of cancer, HPV is it. Nasty at the time, but less likely to recur. Once you’re done, you should – fingers crossed, God willing etc – stay done. As for the advice I’d give myself if I could go back and do that – “believe them! It will pass! You’ll be absolutely fine. Eat more, and get on with it!”
On fellow survivor Emma Hannigan
Any conversation with Emma has always left me laughing and energized, rather than anything specific she has said. To talk to her – about anything at all, not just cancer – is to realise that here is someone with way more than the average share of guts, and blood-minded determination. I admire her enormously. She is the most courageous person I know, without being anything like a tediously good person. She is funny, out-spoken, shockingly irreverent and braver than a lion. I rang her very early on when I was told I had cancer, and even though she was herself (again!) battling it, she was cheering, practical and incredible supportive.
On journalism highlights
There are a million… starting Himself with Daire O’Brien, then The Dubliner with Trevor White. Both those things were insanely good fun. Also insanely hard work, but we more than made up for working hard by playing hard. All sorts of talented and sometimes crazy, even occasionally criminal, characters, chancers and celebrities came and went in my life at that time, many of whom have stayed friends. We did cover shoots, launch parties, early houses and investment meetings, often all in one day. Getting to know Trevor’s brother, Tim White, who tragically died recently, was a privilege.
One interview with “It Boy” Gavin Lambe-Murphy and Aidan Walshe, Master of the Universe, in which each kept gallantly insisting that the other was the more famous, sticks in my mind. For both, it seemed, there was no other currency that mattered. Plagiarizing John Banville back to him (long story) was something else I remember, though I’m sure he doesn’t. It was mortifying, but very funny. Getting signed for my first novel (that never saw the light of day) by a publishing company started up by a mysterious American, and that subsequently “disappeared” in peculiar circumstances was pretty memorable too!
Love THEGLOSS.ie? Sign up to our MAILING LIST now for a roundup of the latest fashion, beauty, interiors and entertaining news from THE GLOSS MAGAZINE’s daily dispatches.