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WORK TITLE: Bright I Burn
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NATIONALITY: Irish
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PERSONAL
Born in 1991. Married Artur Gower (lecturer).
EDUCATION:University of Galway, B.A.; Bath Spa University, M.A. Studying for a PhD in Creative Writing and History at Sheffield Hallam University.
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CAREER
Developmental editor and writer. Has worked as a copywriter.
AWARDS:Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction, Ploughshares magazine, 2024, for “Thresholds.”
WRITINGS
Contributor of short stories to periodicals such as Ploughshares.
Her short stories have been dramatized for BBC Radio 4.
SIDELIGHTS
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Molly Aitken is a writer who was born in Scotland but grew up on the south coast of Ireland. She has written both short stories and novels, and she received the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction for her short fiction in 2024. Her debut novel, The Island Child, was published in 2020 and was inspired by Aitken’s experiences of reading the Odyssey in university and hearing stories of fairy children growing up.
Aitken’s second novel, Bright I Burn, is set in thirteenth-century Ireland and based on the true story of Alice Kyteler, who was the first Irish woman convicted of witchcraft. In the novel, she takes over her father’s inn and makes it even more successful than he had. The money and status that goes with it make her a target for many of her neighbors, however. That becomes even more so when each of her first four husbands dies under suspicious circumstances. When a new bishop accuses her of witchcraft, she looks to avoid her fate.
“Fiercely intelligent and often surprising” is how a reviewer in Publishers Weekly described the novel. They praised Aitken for the book’s “sharp, poetic vignettes” from Alice’s perspective and how those contrast with the “chorus of judgmental villagers.” They also enjoyed how Alice “makes a beguiling heroine.” A writer in Kirkus Reviews was also enthusiastic, praising the story as “an incredible medieval life rendered in incandescent flashes.” They appreciated how the prose is more “lyric impressionism” rather than overstuffed with “worldbuilding and contextual detail.” Sydney Hankin, writing in BookPage, called the narrative a “quick-moving yet immersive experience” and praised Aitken’s “prowess in character building.”
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BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
BookPage, September, 2024, Sydney Hankin, review of Bright I Burn.
Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2020, review of The Island Child; July 15, 2024, review of Bright I Burn.
Publishers Weekly, July 15, 2024, review of Bright I Burn, p. 64.
The Bookseller, July 19, 2019, “Five Questions for … Molly Aitken,” author interview, p. 15.
ONLINE
CelticLife, https://celticlifeintl.com/ (October 22, 2020), author interview.
Citizen Femme, https://citizen-femme.com/ (March 26, 2021), Millie Walton, “A Way with Words: Molly Aitken,” author interview.
Cunning Folk, https://www.cunning-folk.com/ (March 3, 2020), author interview.
Sue Leonard blog, https://suejleonard.com/ (March 30, 2020), author interview.
March 3, 2020
In conversation With Molly Aitken
Elizabeth Kim
Molly Aitken was born in Scotland in 1991 but raised in Ireland. One of her short stories was included in the Irish Imbas 2017 Short Story Collection and she was shortlisted for Writing Magazine’s fairy tale retelling prize 2016. Her magical debut novel, The Island Child, is steeped in Irish folklore and centres on motherhood, womanhood and identity. In a review for The Telegraph, Ella Cory-Wright described Aitken’s prose as ‘exquisite’ and said ‘Aitken is an exciting new voice in Irish literature.’
Image © Christy Ku
Image © Christy Ku
Elizabeth Kim What inspired you to write The Island Child?
Molly Aitken For me fiction inspires fiction. Many years ago I read two fictions in the same week that synchronously came together as the idea for The Island Child. One was a scene in The Odyssey where Odysseus is shipwrecked in a storm and washes up on a tiny island where he’s found by a princess. The scene was so vivid to me I even dreamt about it. A few days later I read Riders To The Sea by the Irish playwright John Millington Synge about a family of women on one of the Aran Islands waiting to hear news of whether the last surviving son and brother had drowned. The two began to meld and I wondered how that story of a stranger washing up on an island would work if the island was Irish and the setting was a little more contemporary. However, I didn’t put pen to paper for years. Something about the story didn’t feel right for me to write...until I realised it wasn’t about the strange man but the woman who lived on the island and wanted to escape it. And that’s how Oona was born.
EK Why did you decide to set this on an imaginary island off the coast of Ireland, not somewhere we can find on a map?
MA The island, Inis, in The Island Child is based on many islands around Ireland that I was familiar with from childhood, especially Cape Clear and the Aran Islands. As a child and teenager holidaying on the islands, I felt like anything was possible there. My belief in the fairies was heightened perhaps because islands are so isolated, you are so close to nature, so at its mercy. I wanted Inis to have that magical aura that childhood brings, an essence of the otherworldly, so it felt important that it wasn’t a real place. The island throughout the story is rooted in memory, and Oona, the narrator, bends the place to fit her memories and emotions. It is in many ways a place outside of time for Oona so it felt important that although it’s based on real islands and the way those islanders lived, Inis is its own place. That also allowed me to make up my own myths and stories about it.
EK In your novel, we see fairy folklore and pre-Christian ideas blended with Christianity. What research did you do?
MA There was no specific research I did initially into the peculiar Irish phenomenon of blending Christianity with folk belief. Although I think in many Catholic cultures the dregs of pre-Christian ideas still live alongside present practices. Italy springs to mind. I grew up in this environment so I never really thought to question it. My parents weren’t religious, but I went to Christian schools (it’s hard to avoid them in Ireland) and also heard the stories of the little folk from adults all around me. For a long time I believed they were all related. The gods in Greek myths populated heaven alongside the Catholic God while the land was inhabited by the little people. There’s a wonderful belief held by some people in Ireland which I included in The Island Child that the fairies are actually fallen angels, not quite bad enough for Hell but who still cause a deal of mischief on earth. I love this explanation because it perfectly marries Christianity to folklore and that’s the power of stories. When early readers of The Island Child mentioned how odd this blend of folk Christianity was I began to research it. Most of what we know about it has been passed down orally and only in the last fifty years or so have the stories been collected into books.
EK And having grown up in the Republic of Ireland, in your experience, does this resemble the way Christianity is practised in rural Ireland today?
MA Growing up in Ireland I heard stories about the fairies from people who went to church every Sunday. As a child I visited a holy well dedicated to St Bridget where there was a tree covered in flapping rags and odd trinkets. In pre-Christian times, these wells were for a goddess or nature spirit. People are perfectly aware of this flips. The more rural in Ireland you get, the more stories and personal sightings of the little folk or even the odd banshee. At pubs in rural Ireland I heard many a ghost story and personal folk tale. I believe that being so close to nature encourages these sightings. I never heard anything about the little people in Dublin.
EK Your story veers away from the more romantic notions of little folk and revisits the terror associated with encountering them in classic fairytales. You don’t shy away from describing the more hostile aspects of living so close to nature — the things that terrified people in ancient times — the scene where the whale is cut up comes to mind. Can a magical world view and re-enchantment ever come without the terror of coming face-to-face with Pan in the wilderness?
MA Although not set in ancient times, The Island Child is about people who live in communion and friction with nature. They rely on it completely to survive but it is highly volatile and dangerous. The sea takes lives and so does the rocky land. When people live so closely to nature, it does become more threatening. In this way, the fairies who are tied to the islanders’ understanding of nature also have to be threatening. The first time Oona leaves her house on her own, she’s conflicted with joy at her freedom but also fear about what lurks in the fields and water surrounding her. As a child she has been filled up with these stories of the dangers of the land and sea in order to protect her, but this means the world beyond her mother’s cottage seems dangerous. There are fairies lurking everywhere ready to steal her away. The scene of the whale is a good example. The people of the island have a story about how they live on the back of a whale. She is their mother and protects them. When the whale washes up, it quite literally sustains them, but it’s horrific to Oona and some of the other characters. They struggle to combine the beauty of the myth with their harsh reality.
EK Myths often centre on men—did you, in your research, find stories centred on female experience?
MA I’ve always been much more interested in myths about women, and women’s experience, than the swords and clatter of male narratives because they feel more familiar to me. I can relate. When that scene in The Odyssey of the hero washing up on an island came to me as a good novel idea, one of the reasons I didn’t want to write it was because the story was too familiar and therefore boring. When I realised I could tell it from the woman’s perspective and in that way reclaim it, the narrative and voice came alive. I think now is a really important time for myths about women. For so long, the ancient western stories that are remembered and honoured are about men but finally the tide is shifting and people, including myself, are becoming much more interested in re-enlivening the voices that have been silenced for so long. Amazing examples are Madeline Miller’s Circe and Natalie Haynes A Thousand Ships not to mention contemporary retellings Kamilla Shamsie’s Homefire.
The novel I’m currently writing, The Butterfly Factory is a loose retelling of the myth of Psyche. This is a very unknown story from antiquity where the woman is very powerful. It’s almost a feminine story of Hercules. When I mention this myth people are either unfamiliar with it or only know Psyche from art where she is hyper sexualised. I hope to change this a little with my writing.
EK Do you think of Oona as a character channelling the witch archetype? Which witchy Irish figures inspired her?
MA This is such an interesting question. At the beginning of The Island Child when Oona is still young she becomes fascinated by a wild, outsider woman named Aislinn. She’s an unmarried woman who lives alone with her child and grows herbs and strange plants in her garden. She also offers healing to people who ask for it. These aspects of her make the islanders suspicious of her. She is the character who people suspect of being a witch in The Island Child, but that’s not how she sees herself. She sees herself as an independent woman who is self-sufficient and content without a husband. This is what Oona wants for her own life too. The freedom of what this small community views as a witch.
EK Oona is haunted by the island that shaped her; the lines between her and that setting blur. Can we ever escape where we came from?
MA This is a complicated question without one simple answer. In The Island Child Oona is haunted by her past because she refuses to acknowledge it. Once she left the island Inis for Canada, she never speaks about where she comes from or who she is because of her home. Her past is particularly traumatic. The main message of The Island Child and what I hope readers will take away from it is that stories and telling our stories can be healing. Only once Oona begins to acknowledge her past does she then transform it into something she can examine without fear. I don’t think she will ever escape it but she can become less fearful. She can face it. Speaking the words and telling the story of her past through the novel almost breaks the spell she has allowed her past to cast over her. Words shine light into the dark corners and shows her she can live with them. That’s the power of story.
EK Finally, which other books about the sea and/or Irish mythology would you recommend to readers?
MA While writing The Island Child I read many books including ‘Women and the Sea: A Reading List’ as well as The Country Girls trilogy by Edna O’Brien, The Good People by Hannah Kent and the particularly magical and strange Himself by Jess Kidd. I also recommend the stories of Peig Sayers who was one of the greatest storytellers Ireland has ever had.
Posted by Sue Leonard on Monday 30th March 2020
Molly didn’t learn to read until she was 10.
“But at my Steiner school I was focused on art and stories. I forced my friends to do theatre and puppets. I loved directing and controlling them.”
“I’ve always loved fairy and folk tales; I was told them, along with bible stories when I was little. I believed in them all; they all existed together.”
At 10 she wrote a book and sent it to her aunt who had it published into a real book.
“That made me think, ‘I want to be a writer.’”
After university Molly worked in Bath as a copywriter for a year.
“And I continued to do that in conjunction with my MA.”
Molly won best thesis of the year with what became the first half of her debut.
“Through winning that, I acquired my agent, Helen Ogden.
Moving to Manchester, then Sheffield, she continued copywriting for advertising companies.
Who is Molly Aitken?
Date of birth: 1991 in Perth Scotland, but brought up in Kildare, and then Ballydehob, West Cork.
Education: Schull Community College; NUI Galway, Literature and Classics; Bath Spa University, MA in Creative Writing.
Home: Sheffield.
Family: Husband, Artur Gower. “He’s a lecturer. We met in Galway.”
The Day Job: Development Editing and some Ghostwriting.
In Another Life: “I’ve always wanted to fly, so I’d be an acrobat in Cirque du Soleil.”
Favourite Writers: Edna O’Brien; Jeanette Winterson; Faye Weldon; Sally Rooney; Naoise Dolan; Louise O’Neill.
Second Novel: Set in Scotland, it’s about a little girl who is fascinated with death.
Top Tip: Keep writing. Keep editing. Be persistent. Successful writers are the ones who keep trying.
Twitter: @MollyAitken1
The Debut: The Island Child. Canongate: €17.98. Kindle: €8.70
Brought up on an Island, steeped in myth and fairy tales, Oona can’t wait to escape its confines. She goes to Canada and has her own daughter. She’s desperate for a second chance, but can you ever truly leave your past behind?
“Oona isn’t the easiest character; she’s a difficult person, but I hope readers understand why she is prickly, and how history made her that way.”
The Verdict: Rich, original, and rooted in folklore. This lyrical debut charts a search for identity, and the difficulties of mother daughter relationships.
Published in The Irish Examiner on 29th February.
October 22, 2020by CelticLifeNo CommentsCeltic Life
Molly Aitken
Born in Perth, Scotland and reared in a small seaside village in West Cork, debut author Molly Aiken grew up listening to harrowing tales of Celtic folklore and myth.
“My mother told me the stories, and I believed they were all true,” she tells Celtic Life International from her home in Sheffield, U.K. “As soon as I realized that there was someone who wrote down the stories that I read, I knew it was the job for me. Even now writing still feels like play to me so it hasn’t changed all that much. But, I suppose, now it’s play that pays the bills.”
Although the 28-year-old says her career in writing has been filled with many highlights – most notably, meeting her intelligent and thoughtful readers – she admits that the solitary lifestyle of a writer can be challenging.
“I really loved touring bookshops and meeting readers, but at the end of the day to get a story down on the page you have to spend a lot of time alone, or rather only with the characters in your head. It can be quite lonely at times.”
Earlier this year, Aitken released her debut novel The Island Child (Cannongate Books), a magical-historical work of fiction that explores themes of identity, freedom and motherhood.
“I came up with the idea while I was living in Galway,” she recalls. “I had an idea of a man washing up on the beach of a tiny island and changing the community there. I soon realized that the story was not about him, but about the girl that found him. She began telling me her story.”
The 320-page narrative follows a young woman named Oona who flees her home on the Isle of Inis in search of a new life. Alternating between storylines of Oona’s past and present, the novel is described as both haunting and rich, and brings to life old stories of Irish folklore.
“I actually never set out to write about Irish folklore, but so many folktales are still relevant today – that is why we keep telling them.
“Look at the selkie; she gives up a free and joyful part of herself to become a wife and mother when she leaves the sea, but she still longs to return. Countless women today can relate to this.”
While the book is purely fiction, Aitken says she did significant research on the Aran Islands.
“I based my fictional island, Inis, on some of the islands around Ireland. The islands – particularly the Aran Islands and Blasket – became famous in Ireland in the early 1900s and many islanders wisely decided to make a bit of money by writing down or dictating their lives and stories. There is a wealth of literature, diaries and accounts of islanders so I spent a lot of time poring over those. Over the years of writing I also visited Inis Oirr, the smallest of the Aran Islands to feel the wind and rain on my face and hear the birds and clack of stones under my feet. I wanted to really feel the place in my bones.”
“One of the joys of creating a fictional place is not only that it can have a timeless, mythic quality, but also that it can be shaped to suit whatever story you are telling.”
The Island Child has generated great buzz in the few months since hitting shelves, with The Telegraph calling it “exquisite” – and labelling Aitken as an exciting new voice in Irish fiction.
“It was a story I had been living with for several years and I was so relieved to have finished it, and to have written a story that I was, and am, incredibly proud of.”
Aitken notes that her novel fits into a much larger trend of contemporary authors reworking old tales of folklore, fairy tale, and myth.
“Folklore is not only a strong part of our heritage, but also an important part of our present. I always find it sad if myths and stories are lost, which is why reinterpretation is so important. That could be through film, art, fiction, really anything. It can make stories that we think of as irrelevant re-energized for a new audience.”
With her debut novel freshly behind her, the young scribe is already working on her next project.
“It’s about a messy family and begins in a small village in West Cork and journeys out to Scotland and Italy that, like The Island Child, draws on folktales and myth.”
@molly.aitken
A Way With Words: Molly Aitken
By: Millie Walton
Mar 26, 21
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In this month’s edition of A Way With Words – an ongoing series of interviews with contemporary female writers – CF speaks to Molly Aitken.
Molly Aitken’s debut novel The Island Child (published in January 2020) is a spellbinding tale of love and loss, motherhood and freedom set on on the fictional island of Inis. Here, the author discusses her love of mythology, mother-daughter relationships, and why writing the book was a way of travelling back home.
What do you find interesting about fairytales and myths?
All stories I think are humans’ way of understanding ourselves and the world. Fairy tales and myths are this stripped down to the most basic form. They are this understanding in a distilled form. This makes them have a feeling of universal truth. However, many fairy tales and myths are problematic, sexist, ableist and racist which is partly why I think writers continue to revisit them so that we can examine these views of the world, challenge them and perhaps rewrite them.
Funnily enough, even though I didn’t set out to include mythology in my novel The Island Child one just naturally found its way in. After I’d finished the first draft I realised that the themes of the novel were similar to the myth of Demeter and Persephone. It’s the story of a mother who loses her child, and a daughter who is forced to grow up.
Do you need a particular atmosphere or mindset to be able to write fiction?
I don’t really. I can write anywhere. In a noisy café, on a train, or in my little study at home surrounded by books and silence. If I am in my office I do like to light a candle, just as a signal to my brain that now is creative time. No phones or internet allowed while the flame is burning. I must admit I do sometimes break this rule but the candle generally keeps me in check. What’s more important than place for me is how I’m doing in myself. If my mental health is bad I struggle to write anywhere. So I focus on taking care of myself and then the writing generally flows.
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How did The Island Child begin?
Like so many ideas one scene bubbled in my mind for years. While studying in Galway in my early twenties, I read The Odyssey and one section where Odysseus is washed up on the shore of a tiny island. I began wondering what would happen if a stranger washed up on an island off the coast of Ireland. How would they change the islanders? It was several years later, while I was studying a masters in creative writing in Bath that I was brave enough to put pen to paper but I quickly became more interested in the girl who found the castaway, her family life and the island she grew up on. Her voice and her story took over. She was Oona, and in many ways I feel like she wrote the novel. I was just there to watch.
During the writing process, did the narrative take any expected or dramatic turns along the way?
I don’t plan my writing much before I begin. When I sit at my desk at the beginning of a new project, I have vague notions, perhaps the sound of a voice or just an atmosphere. So my writing constantly surprises me. A good example is that early on in drafting The Island Child I wrote a scene with a shipwreck and islander’s coming to save the drowning men. Then I put it to one side and forgot it. A few months later I was doing research and stumbled on a description of a real shipwreck very similar to the one I had ‘imagined’. When I went to look at the specifics I’d written the exact same date and many details of the wreck exactly how they happened in the accounts. Perhaps I’d stumbled on that real shipwreck before and forgotten but it still felt like one of those magical writing moments.
I think I began writing The Island Child to make me feel less homesick. Every time I sat down to write I was going back.
The book is sometimes labelled as an “escapist read.” Was writing it an act of escapism?
For me, writing The Island Child was an act of escaping home. While I wrote it I was living in Bath, England and although it’s a beautiful place I really missed Ireland: the people, the landscape, and even shockingly the weather. I think I began writing The Island Child to make me feel less homesick. Every time I sat down to write I was going back. The Ireland I created on the page was more extreme than the one I grew up in. The storms were harsher, the life on the tiny island much harder but the things I loved were the same: the stories, the people, and the wild landscape.
What made you decide to set the novel on an imagined island and how did you go about creating such a vivid sense of place?
I set my novel on a fictional island, Inis for selfish reasons. I wanted a setting that I could manipulate and make up my own folklore for. I also didn’t want to be restricted by the geography of any specific place. Part of what is so enjoyable about writing for me is the act of creating a new world, and what better way to do that than set it someplace imagined. Saying that though, I did draw heavily from the islands I’ve visited ever since childhood. I like to have the real world to draw on even if I’m going to bend it to my own uses.
Did one of the book’s timelines or narrative threads come to you more easily than the others?
The novel tells two stories: of the girl who grew up on an island steeped in folklore and the Catholic rules of her mother, and the adult in search of her daughter and desperate to escape her past. For me, the voice of Oona as a child was the easiest to write. Something about her young view of the world was such an unexpected joy to place on the page.
What role does brutality and violence play in the story?
Brutality and violence in The Island Child both come from the patriarchal influence of the church. The men in the story are just as much at mercy to them, and suffer too in their own ways. Personally, I wasn’t lucky enough to see much positivity from the Catholic church growing up in Ireland. The recent report about the appalling abuse in the mother and baby homes is just one example. To counteract this brutal and violent force in the story, I used folklore, which I feel has a much more feminine influence. They offer Oona and the other characters escape. I also love how in Ireland for such a long time folk belief has co-existed alongside Catholicism. I really loved exploring that dichotomy in the book.
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In recent years, a lot of women writers (and artists) seem to be unravelling and reshaping traditional portrayals of motherhood and mother-daughter relationships. What interests you in these themes?
There’s a common narrative about mothers and perfection, not necessarily in fiction, but definitely in everyday life. Mothers are given very high standards to reach, but if they fail to do it the ‘right’ way they can be judged harshly, particularly in Ireland. This is an idea that a lot of writers, particularly women writers, confront in their work, myself included. Exploring mother-daughter relationships was particularly important to me. Daughters will often judge their mothers only to discover, if they become a mother too, that they also struggle and are challenged by stereotypes. In The Island Child Oona is in no way the perfect mother trope and nor is her mother, but I was eager to show how their lives and patriarchal society has impacted them and their mothering. Hopefully revealing that this standard and pressure negatively affects the mother and child. I hope that even if readers judge the way the characters parent, they understand why.
Do you see your work fitting into a broader tradition of contemporary Irish writing?
In a way it’s inescapable to be placed in this tradition, especially when you live outside of Ireland. I think in Ireland we just call it contemporary fiction, but it makes sense that the publishing industry needs to label it. I don’t at all mind being compared to the amazing writing coming out of Ireland at the moment.
It’s writers like Edna O’Brien who paved the way for us, making it easier. She continues to be a huge influence on me and my writing. She still faces taboo with many of her novels.
Are there any writers or books that have been particularly influential to your practice?
I always say Edna O’Brien. I read her novel The Country Girls when I was sixteen and it changed my ideas about what women were ‘allowed’ to write about in Ireland. The story was about girls like me and spoke freely about sex and desire. Of course, I loved that as it was unlike anything I’d read set in Ireland. I only found out later that the Irish censorship board had banned it on its release in 1960. But that fascinated me even more. She wrote it anyway, but had to leave Ireland because of it. I’m grateful now that I and other women writers can write about whatever we want. It’s writers like Edna O’Brien who paved the way for us, making it easier. She continues to be a huge influence on me and my writing. She still faces taboo with many of her novels. I hope to do the same with mine because really that’s where the most interesting stories lie.
And finally, I hear you’re writing your second novel, how’s that going and can you give us any clues as to what to expect?
I’ve been writing my second novel in a daze and at speed. I love a deadline and currently at six months pregnant this is the best one I’ve ever had. I’m secretive about projects until they’re done, but without giving too much away, the novel is a retelling of a true story about a powerful and controversial woman from Ireland’s history. She made some pretty powerful enemies in the church but went her own way in spite of them. I’m having a lot of fun researching and writing about her.
Quick-fire questions:
What are you currently reading?
I just started Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa. Already, it’s beautiful.
Favourite fairytale or myth?
Eros and Psyche. Sadly, not that well known.
Where do you go to escape?
The sea. Any sea.
A writer that you think everyone should read?
Is it cheating if I say Edna O’Brien?
BUY HERE
(01) Can you tell us about The Island Child?
The Island Child is a loose retelling of the Persephone myth about Oona-a girl growing up on an imagined island off the west coast of Ireland. When she befriends a wild boy and his outsider mother, her family begins to unravel. Years later, in Canada, her daughter vanishes, taking Oona on a journey back through the childhood she tried to forget.
(02) What was the inspiration for the story?
The idea came from a part of the Odyssey where Odysseus, the outsider, washes up on the shores of an island. I think this captured me because as a child my family moved from Kildare to a tiny village in West Cork and we were definitely the outsiders there. I'm very preoccupied with mother-daughter relationships, which is a big theme in The Island Child. I also spent time on islands soaking up the rain and sea spray, so I could really drench myself in the lives of my characters.
(03) Why do you think Irish writing is so hot right now?
I'm not sure Irish writing is having any more of a moment than it already has in the past few years. Although it does seem like Irish women writers, and particularly younger women writers, are getting more attention than we have had in the past. I think publishing has woken up to the fact that there are a lot of readers in their twenties and thirties who want their experiences reflected in fiction.
(04) Can you tell us about your follow-up?
I'm keeping it under wraps at the moment, but I'll say it's even more inspired by Greek myth than The Island Child. It's a contemporary retelling, and about first love. So far it features lots of travel around Europe. I live in the UK now, so you could say it's my fictional goodbye to the EU.
(05) What inspires you overall?
I often use fairytales and myths as a jumping-off point. Other writers massively inspire me, too. I was reading a lot of Edna O'Brien and Jennifer Johnston while I wrote The Island Child. But sitting at my desk and typing until something halfway decent falls out is the only real way I've found to get "inspiration".
Aitken's debut novel, The Island Child, is due to be published in spring 2020 by Canongate as part of a two-book deal. Aitken was born in Scotland and brought up in Ireland. She studied classics and literature at Galway University and earned an MA in creative writing from Bath Spa University.
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"Five questions for ... Molly Aitken: Author." The Bookseller, no. 5851, 19 July 2019, p. 15. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A594147894/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=bc22fbb2. Accessed 26 Sept. 2024.
Aitken, Molly THE ISLAND CHILD Knopf (Fiction None) $26.95 7, 28 ISBN: 978-0-525-65837-5
A mother’s quest to find her estranged daughter is wrapped around another, earlier mother-daughter story of secrets and superstition, violence and desperation, rooted on a wind-whipped island.
A fevered intensity drives British writer Aitken’s debut, along with an unrelenting stress on femaleness and maternal attachment. In parallel timelines, it traces the lonely, burdened life of child and adult Oona Coughlan, daughter of an obsessively restrictive mother on the Irish-speaking island of Inis. The free-spirited child, born while her mother was having a vision of the Virgin Mary, lives a narrow life compared to her brothers—“There’s no leaving the island. Not for a woman”—and Oona strains against her bonds, yearning for a different mother, like Aislinn, the incomer and healer who lives on the cliff edge. Aitken’s lyrical voice evokes the perilous fishing community and the harsh beauty of the island while piling on the high-colored, often blood-drenched events. There’s a miscarriage, a witchy outcast who gives birth on the beach, a murder, a fire, a rape, a drowning, a home birth that shocks a child, a shipwreck. Meanwhile, in the other, interleaved narrative stream, dating some 20 years later, adult Oona, married to Pat and living in Canada, is desperate to reconnect with her own daughter, Joyce, who has disappeared. An intermittent third narrative, spun like a fairy tale, punctuates events with suggestions of the Persephone myth, adding one more layer of emphasis to the matrilineal theme. These overlapping, parallel threads, nearly always delivered at the same (high) emotional pitch and from Oona’s fixated perspective, run an immensely long course as she travels her physical and psychological journey of emigration, postnatal depression, second pregnancy, loss, more loss, and, in a final circular spin, a return to the island where her two worlds may eventually become one.
A stylish but overburdened fable of suffering and expiation.
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"Aitken, Molly: THE ISLAND CHILD." Kirkus Reviews, 15 May 2020, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A623602944/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e7c48c56. Accessed 26 Sept. 2024.
Bright | Burn
Molly Aitken. Knopf, $28 (296p)
ISBN 978-0-525-65839-9
The blistering latest from Aitken (The Island Child) gives voice to Alice Kyteler (1280-1325), the first Irish woman convicted of witchcraft. Aitken portrays Alice, who evaded her punishment by fleeing the country, as a formidable figure and nobody's idea of a victim. Having inherited an inn and a banking and lending business from her father, Alice goes through four wealthy husbands, all of whom die suspiciously, before coming to the attention of an ambitious new bishop, who accuses her of witchcraft. Alice makes a beguiling heroine whose lust for money, power, and sex are constrained but never thwarted. Some of her actions are horrifying--she shoves one of her husbands down the stairs to his death, and fatally poisons another--but Aitken never wavers in portraying her humanity Particularly striking are the depictions of Alice's sorrow at the death of her young daughter and at the growing distance between her and her son. The novel moves through the decades in sharp, poetic vignettes told from Alice's point of view, which are interspersed with commentary from a chorus of judgmental villagers ("I always thought there was something unnatural about her"; "Rich people are so odd"). It adds up to a fiercely intelligent and often surprising examination of a woman's choices and their consequences. Agent: HellieOgden, WME. (Sept.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 PWxyz, LLC
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"Bright | Burn." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 27, 15 July 2024, p. 64. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A802348037/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=11c1ebba. Accessed 26 Sept. 2024.
Aitken, Molly BRIGHT I BURN Knopf (Fiction None) $28.00 9, 10 ISBN: 9780525658399
A novel set in 13th-century Ireland detailing the life of the first woman in that country to be convicted of witchcraft.
Everyone in Kilkenny knows Alice Kyetler. Her father, an innkeeper and a lender, has passed his business onto her. As a woman banker, she is shrewd; as a marriage prospect, she is intimidating, with her independence and fearlessness. Eventually she marries William Outlaw, another moneylender, with whom she has a son and a daughter. Outlaw is no match for the fiery Alice--he lacks interest in her, especially sexually, much to her impatience--and when their daughter dies, a shattered Alice's eyes begin to rove elsewhere. After Outlaw himself dies, Alice moves from one wealthy husband to the next, each one dying under circumstances that set the rumor mill humming, eventually culminating in an unprecedented accusation that will change history forever. For those who have read books like Madeline Miller'sCirce or Natalie Haynes'Stone Blind, the story's contours are familiar, at least at first: A woman with a bit too much power, pride, and ambition gets put in her place by a society all too eager to uphold conventions. But Aitken herself eschews convention: The historical novel, usually stuffed with worldbuilding and contextual detail, here unfolds via a lyric impressionism, moving like skipped stones through Alice's life from girlhood to old age. As the novel hits the middle of Alice's story, these stones skip faster, upping the tension. And unlike, say, Circe, Alice is less a misunderstood woman than, like many of history's greatest figures, villain and victim in one, complex and elliptical. "Did you never wish to know what it is to be ordinary, unseen?" Alice is asked as a young woman. "No, and I certainly never will," she replies.
An incredible medieval life rendered in incandescent flashes.
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"Aitken, Molly: BRIGHT I BURN." Kirkus Reviews, 15 July 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A801499674/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5e8e4d85. Accessed 26 Sept. 2024.
By Molly Aitken
As the 16-year-old daughter of moneylenders from Kilkenny, Ireland, Alice Kyteler has learned to trust very little. Only the surrounding brooks and forests, the gold stashed in her floorboards, and her own mind make the cut. One wrong turn could paint an immediate bullseye on her back: For a woman in the 13th century, a charge of witchcraft is just a misstep away. With her mother dead at the hands of her father, and herself aware that she is rapidly approaching the age at which she must marry, Alice has more reason than ever to be on her guard around the men in her life.
Bright I Burn (Knopf, $28, 9780525658399) is strongly inspired by the few known details about Ireland's first condemned witch, whose life author Molly Aitken (The Island Child) thoughtfully explores into adulthood and old age. Four marriages--each unmistakably different from the last--shape Alice's path through the highs and lows of motherhood, work, religion, loss and public life.
While her experiences as a young parent are the most emotional and devastatingly palpable, Alice's defining blend of pragmatism and spontaneity lend a unique outlook to her later years. As she learns to navigate grief and a world awash in fear, Alice's wistfulness becomes lyrical poetry in Aitken's hands: "Here, moth larvae nick away at bark until trees crash to the ground, and snow falls, suns set, and rivers change course. It is the place of great sky-shattering storms. A place where two women could stand naked, hair undressed for the wind to dance."
Memories and dreams, along with letters, songs and the ever-present town gossip, are interspersed with the narrative, creating a quick-moving yet immersive experience that's better felt than analyzed. While folks looking for a more historically expansive narrative may find Bright I Burn to be too interior, the author's prowess in character building helps bring Alice's story to life. Aitken instills a complex and heartbreaking grit in Alice which is both moving and painful to witness.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 BookPage
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Hankin, Sydney. "Bright I Burn." BookPage, Sept. 2024, pp. 19+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A808547392/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e190f68c. Accessed 26 Sept. 2024.