SOPHIE GRENHAM talks to author S.A. DUNPHY about working in SOCIAL CARE, growing up in Wexford and his LOVE OF MUSIC …
Photograph by Eoin Rafferty
S.A. Dunphy, otherwise known as Shane Dunphy, is one of Irish crime fiction’s brightest new stars. After She Vanished, his first entry in the David Dunnigan series, was practically an overnight success, with two more books already in the pipeline. The gripping tale has struck a chord with fans all over the country, as we follow a bereft criminologist haunted by the disappearance of his niece, who was snatched on his watch. One could almost say this is a great first novel, but Shane is no debutante. To date, he has published an impressive nine titles in the ‘misery lit’ genre, some of which have dominated the non-fiction Irish bestseller charts and reached the London Times Top Ten list. The author was previously a child protection worker for fifteen years and the popular volumes are a collection of memoirs from that time. Some of his most notable works are Wednesday’s Child (2009), The Girl Who Couldn’t Smile (2012) and The Boy They Tried To Hide (2016). The last book has been optioned for the big screen with Rumble Films, the Los Angeles production company behind such movies as Drive and Nightcrawler.
In addition to writing fiction and non-fiction, Shane lectures in the Waterford College of Further Education, where he runs the social care department. He is a freelance journalist, contributing mainly to the Irish Independent, as well as to television and radio. Shane is a recent recruit to the Wexford Literary Festival committee.
After She Vanished (€18.20) is published by Hachette and available from bookshops nationwide.
S.A. Dunphy lives with his wife and their two children in County Wexford. When She Was Gone, book two in the David Dunnigan series, is out in 2018. He is currently working on the third instalment.
On home
I live on Whiterock Hill in Wexford, which is an old transport road that was once the main thoroughfare between the town and the farmlands of Johnstown Castle, a Big House that employed a lot of people in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. It still does, but in a different way, as the Department of Agriculture has offices there now.
We’ve been in our current home since 2003, which is the longest by far we’ve ever stayed anywhere, working as we did in social care (my wife is a social care worker too). We were a bit nomadic when we were married first, and moved around the country, following the work. Wexford has always been home, though, and when the opportunity came to move back and settle, we jumped at the chance. In a piece of wonderful synchronicity our house and current jobs teaching social care in Waterford College of Further Education became available at the same time.
On routine
During term time, I’m usually up at about 6.45am. I’m the first one up in the house and am usually having breakfast and watching something on TV no one else wants to watch while the others are showering. Doctor Who is the obvious one – I’ve been an obsessive fan since I was a kid. We’ll have left the house before eight and we grab some coffee along the way. I actually quite like the drive. We listen to Marty Whelan in the morning and Drivetime on the way home. Classes begin at 9.15am. I teach twenty hours a week, and also run the Social Care Department, so once you arrive in to work it’s flat out until 5.00pm. We get home in or around 6.30pm. I usually cook, because I enjoy it.
After dinner, I walk my dogs – I have two terrier mixes, George and Lulu, and they’re both very energetic little creatures, who get highly irritated if they don’t get their evening stroll. I start getting hard looks at about 7.00pm, wondering when I’m going to get my jacket. After that, it’s an hour or so of TV before bed. I try to read a couple of chapters before sleep. Social media, which I’ve been trying to get to grips with the last few years, makes reading a lot more difficult, I find, but lately I’ve been trying to just shut the WiFi on my phone off before I hit the hay, and focus on whatever book I have on the go. I’m usually nodding off by 12.30am.
On roots
I grew up in Ashfield Drive, a large local authority housing estate which is part of what is now called the FAB area in Wexford. Ferndale, Ashfield, Belvedere, the name of the three large estates that were built in the 1980s. My brother and his family still live in our old family home, and I am always amazed at how small the house seems when I visit it now – as a child it seemed so vast! There was high adventure on the streets, in the fields, and on the building sites around the FAB area; it was like the whole world was our playground, and in those days we were given free-rein to roam far and wide, and we took full advantage of this freedom.
Books and reading were a massive part of my childhood – my mother was a passionate reader, and my brother, Karl and I (and later my sister, Tara) were read to every night, even long after we could read to ourselves. Enid Blyton was a perennial favourite, but AA Milne, Kenneth Graham, Richmal Crompton, Michael Bond – we read them all, and I still think the sound of my mother’s voice (she was English and spoke like a BBC continuity announcer) was one of the most soothing and beautiful things. She encouraged me to write, and I was writing my own stories from about the age of six. My first publication was in a collection of stories written by children for children, called I Hate Mustard, which was featured on the Late Late Toy Show. They didn’t talk about my story, but a picture I had drawn was shown on screen, and Gay Byrne commented on it, and I thought this meant I was famous!
The sounds and smells that bring me right back to my childhood are actually connected – every Sunday morning my mother would cook us a roast chicken with all the trimmings, and she would listen to BBC Radio 4. So the theme music to The Archers and the smell of roasting chicken work like a time machine.
On creative space
There are two places I like to work – my office at home, and my office in the college. At home, my office is just inside the front door, with its window overlooking the green area in the centre of our cul-de-sac. My desk is tucked into a nook in the room, and tight beside it is a locker with drawers that hold pens and stationary, and a heavy-duty printer/scanner/photocopier sits on top of that. My home desk isn’t huge, but holds my laptop, a brass lamp and a tiered cupcake tray that has staplers, pens, business cards, Sellotape etc. Behind me is a large stereo system, complete with really good speakers and a vinyl turntable – I keep a selection of vinyl in the office, which I take from a large collection I keep in the attic according to my mood. Since moving to fiction, I have found that I cannot have any distraction – I switch everything off, including the WiFi, and have to totally immerse myself.
Against the back wall is a bookcase almost completely taken up with vintage annuals from the 1950s to the late 1980s. Beano, Dandy, Vulcan, Hotspur, Topper, Lion – I love comic books, particularly British ones. I think they are a beautiful exercise in economy of storytelling. Wedged between the bookshelves and a single bed we keep in the office for visitors are some of my musical instruments: one of my guitars, my banjo, my autoharp, my mandolin and my mandocello. Hung from the middle shelf of the bookcase is my ukulele and, beside it, my grandson’s. I’m teaching him at the moment, and he can make a good C chord and a half-decent F.
On the walls around my desk are a selection of black-and-white photos of musical heroes: Robert Johnson, Bryan Bowers, Cliff Edwards, the pioneering ukulele player. Above the stereo is a painting of an orchid by my friend, Fiona Doyle, and beside it a portrait of me painted by the Doctor Who writer, Paul Margs. I’ve been rendered in art twice, once by Paul and once by Frank Miller, the American comic-book writer and artist – Frank’s is in my office at work. My wife pokes fun at my capacity to make spaces my own. My office in the college is full of nerd stuff: action figures, prints from comics, sketches by various artists I’ve met, signed photos by Sylvester McCoy (the 7th Doctor). She says I’m like a dog marking its territory. I know it annoys some of my colleagues, too, who don’t find such things becoming of an academic. I don’t care. These are all touchstones of who I am and what has built me – and I think they’re beautiful and interesting and I never tire of looking at them.
On bookshops
My favourite bookshop is the Book Centre in Waterford. I lived in Waterford for a while, just before the family moved to Wexford, and I came ahead to get things sorted and cover maternity leave for someone in the college, so I was living alone. I would often go to the Book Centre after work for a coffee and to read the paper, and I found it such a peaceful, warm, friendly place. There is a sunken area in the middle of the store, which has the crime section, literary fiction and graphic novels all within easy reach, so when I tired of the papers, I could reach for the latest Lee Child or the newest Walking Dead omnibus. Add exceptional coffee to that picture, and you have a recipe for utter contentment.
On music
I’ve been involved in one way or another with The Sky and the Ground Bar since it first opened in Wexford town back in 1996/97. The pub hasn’t changed all that much in the 20 years it has been in operation. Johnny and Nuala Barron are the landlords, and I consider them friends. The bar is decorated in a sort of bohemian, olde worlde sensibility, but not in a clichéd way – there are quirky, witty touches everywhere you look. The pub itself is a work of art.
It has always been a music pub. I’ve played there with internationally renowned people like John Spillane, Eddie Reader, Louise Taylor, Justin Townes Earle, Chris Smither and a host of others. Right now, myself and accordion player Kevin MacDermott have a Monday night residency, and you never know who will wander in.
I play stringed instruments – these days I use steel-stringed guitar and mandolin in my sets, but that is liable to change as my mood alters. I didn’t touch the guitar for about five years, and played mandocello and tenor banjo. I went through a phase of playing autoharp and ukulele, and I also play harmonica and percussion.
I suppose I’m known as a singer – I’m fascinated by folk songs, particularly Irish and American. The transmission of these ballads is something that I think about a great deal. I never tire of the notion that I might, on one of my Monday night gigs, sing a song that was written five hundred years ago, and has probably changed a good deal in the intervening years, but that if you were to somehow beam the guy who wrote it into the Sky and the Ground to hear me sing it, he would still recognise the essence and spirit of his creation.
I love the idea that so many voices and souls have shared these songs. I feel a connection to them. Many folk musicians talk about tunes and songs being haunted. I get that. A song brings with it the stories and the lives of all who have touched it. Deciding to sing a song is a responsibility. I don’t take it lightly.
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