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WORK TITLE: What She Saw
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1958
WEBSITE: http://gerardstembridge.com/
CITY: Dublin
STATE:
COUNTRY: Ireland
NATIONALITY: Irish
Lives in Dublin, Ireland, and Paris, France * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Stembridge * http://gerardstembridge.com/bio-works/ * http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0826437/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1958, in Limerick, Ireland.
EDUCATION:Attended University College Dublin.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, director, novelist. RTE, Dublin, Ireland, producer/director, 1985-90. As film director: Guiltrip, 1995; About Adam, 2001; and Alarm, 2008. For radio: Scrap Saturday, RTE 1, cowriter, 1990-92; Daisy, the Cow Who Talked, BBC4, 1994; Daylight Robbery, RTE, 1999. Television writing credits include Nothing To It, 1988; Commonplaces, 1988; The Truth About Claire, 1990; Black Day at Blackrock, 2000; The State of Us, 2011.
WRITINGS
Author of plays, including Betrayals, Ceauşescu’s Ear, Daniel’s Hands, Denis and Rose, The Gay Detective, Nightmare on Essex Street, Love Child, Melting Penguins, That Was Then, and The Leaving. Author of screenplays, including Scrap Saturday, (1989-91), Ordinary Decent Criminal, 2000, and Nora, 2000.
SIDELIGHTS
Gerard Stembridge is an Irish author, filmmaker, and playwright. He began his career as a producer and director at Ireland’s national broadcasting corporation, RTE, in 1985. Five years later, he left the RTE to devote more time to writing. His plays have been performed at the Abbey Theater, among other venues, and his movies include Guiltrip, “an impressive, disturbing glimpse of fear and loathing in a provincial Irish town,” as an online TimeOut London writer noted, and About Adam, a “risqué romantic comedy,” according to BBC Online contributor Anwar Brett, who also called it a “very challenging piece of work.” Stembridge is also the author of the novels According to Luke, Counting Down, Unspoken, The Effect of Her, and What She Saw.
According to Luke and Counting Down
Stembridge’s first novel, According to Luke, features thirty-year-old Luke Reid, a child of privilege living in Ireland. His barrister father has provided an upper-middle-class lifestyle for his family of four. However, when the father is linked to a major political scandal and the rest of the family attempts to ignore this turn of events, Luke finds himself moving out of his comfortable life to become a crusader against corruption with rather shocking and life-changing results.
Counting Down, Stembridge’s second novel, is another morality tale of modern Ireland. Set in 2005, the novel follows the obsessive countdown of Joe Power, divorced from Juliet and the father of a young son, Milo. Joe is marking time until he gets his first post-divorce visit with Milo. He comes across a curiosity: a digital clock that was programmed to count down to the new millennium in 2000. He learns that the original owner died when the clock reached the millennium. Using fresh batteries to reactivate the clock, Joe becomes obsessed with time and how it has affected his past and determines his future. He begins to believe that once the clock reaches zero again, that his ex-wife will die and wonders if he should warn her; he becomes more and more attached to the mystical aspects of the clock and time.
Irish Times Online contributor Liam Harte had high praise for this novel, commenting: “Tightly structured and pacily written, Counting Down is a compelling 21st-century morality tale which explores what happens when reason and personal responsibility are surrendered to the forces of myth and superstition. The novel also brings a changing Ireland into focus. … The novel registers cultural and attitudinal change through characters’ thoughts and conversations, subtly challenging us to measure our own prejudices against theirs in the process.”
Unspoken and The Effect of Her
Stembridge’s third novel, Unspoken, looks at the birth of modern Ireland through the thoughts and life of Fonsie Strong, sitting in a hospital in 1959 and waiting for his wife to give birth. The author looks at the fortunes of the Strong family as well as those of others in the waiting room, including a scheming politician, Dom, and a secret gay man, Gavin Bloom, working in the new field of television. Writing in the London Guardian, Anna Scott had a mixed assessment of Unspoken, noting: “Though utterly convincing as a work of social history, Stembridge’s novel lacks the narrative drive to form a cohesive whole.” For Irish Times Online critic Kevin Power, Unspoken is an “ambitious and somewhat uneven performance, full of human warmth and social detail.” Power further commented: “It is an old-fashioned kind of book, a sort of subdued, more forgiving Vanity Fair with an Irish historical setting.” Writing in the London Independent Online, Brian Lynch found more to like, encouraging the author to “write a sequel, or sequels, covering the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s.” Lynch added: “If future volumes are as curious and intriguing as this one, they will be worth the wait.”
The Effect of Her answers that call for a sequel, focusing on the grown son of Francis Strong and on other characters from Unspoken, and taking the action forward to the 1970s. Here Stembridge looks at a decade of change from women’s rights to abortion and the rising acceptance of homosexuality. Writing in the Daily Mail Online, Carla McKay noted: “It all provides an interesting snapshot of an era, but it is neither a proper novel nor a work of nonfiction. Cramming ten years into one volume literally gives the author no time to develop any cohesive narrative or character development.” Similarly, Irish Times Online reviewer Christina Hunt Mahony felt that the “the fictionalised and factual segments of The Effect of Her demonstrate different levels of skill and don’t necessarily mesh into a coherent style.” Hunt, however, added: “The Effect of Her will be a good summer read, especially among readers for whom the music of what happened in the 1970s is the soundtrack of their lives.”
What She Saw
Stembridge’s 2017 novel, What She Saw, is a departure for the novelist, a thriller set in Paris covering the events of twenty-four hours. American Lana Gibson, who is married to an executive in Dublin, has made a brief escape from her mundane life for a night in the City of Light. She stays at the classy Hotel Chevalier and prepares for an evening to remember. Bipolar, Lana makes sure to take her medications so that she can control her excitement. Then she discovers a secret elevator used only for the Imperial Suite and cannot resist the temptation to get a look at this exclusive area of the hotel. But Lana sees much more than she bargained for. There is an orgy taking place in the suite, and she spots on old man sexually assaulting a beautiful young woman. Appalled by this, Lana takes photos of the man with her cell phone and later calls the police, only to end up ensnared in deadly political machinations, for the older man is an important politician, Jean-Luc Fournier. Soon Lana’s own life is in danger, and she does not know whom she can trust as she navigates a cat-and-mouse game through the streets of Paris.
Reviewing What She Saw in Booklist, Michele Leber called it a “thoroughly entertaining mix of suspense and setting.” Similarly, a Publishers Weekly writer termed it a “satisfyingly twisty 24-hour thrill ride through the heart of contemporary Paris.” Likewise, Fresh Fiction website reviewer Teresa Cross noted: “If you love thrillers, What She Saw is one that I recommend.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, April 1, 2017, Michele Leber, review of What She Saw, p. 26.
Guardian (London England), July 16, 2011, Anna Scott, review of Unspoken, p. 19.
Publishers Weekly, March 27, 2017, review of What She Saw, p. 80.
ONLINE
BBC Online, http://www.bbc.co.uk/ (April 5, 2001), Anwar Brett, author interview.
Bloomsbury Publishing Website, https://www.bloomsbury.com/ (November 25, 2017), “Gerard Stembridge.”
Daily Mail Online, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/ (May 30, 2013), Carla McKay, review of The Effect of Her.
Fantastic Fiction, https://www.fantasticfiction.com/ (November 25, 2017), “Gerard Stembridge.”
Fresh Fiction, http://freshfiction.com/ (October 17, 2017), Teresa Cross, review of What She Saw.
Gerard Stembridge Website, http://gerardstembridge.com (November 25, 2017).
Guardian Online, https://www.theguardian.com/ (July 15, 2011), Anna Scott, review of Unspoken.
HarperCollins Website, https://www.harpercollins.com/ (November 25, 2017), “Gerard Stembridge.”
Independent Online, http://www.independent.ie/ (June 11, 2011), Brian Lynch, review of Unspoken.
Irish Times Online, https://www.irishtimes.com/ (January 31, 2009), Liam Harte, review of Counting Down; (June 11, 2011), Kevin Power, review of Unspoken; (October 17, 2013), Christina Hunt Mahony, review of The Effect of Her.
Literature Ireland, http://www.literatureireland.com/ (November 25, 2017), “Gerard Stembridge.”
TimeOut London, https://www.timeout.com/ (November 25, 2017), review of film Guiltrip.
Gerard Stembridge
(1958)
Born in Limerick, Gerard Stembridge is a writer and director who has worked extensively in theatre, film, TV and radio. Stembridge's plays include Love-Child (1992), Ceausescu's Ear (1993), Melting Penguins (1994), Daniel's Hands (1995), The Gay Detective (1996), Nightmare on Essex Street (2001), and That Was When (2002). A novel, According to Luke, appeared in 2006. Stembridge's films include Guiltrip and About Adam. Gerard Stembridge lives in Dublin.
Books
© Editura Sigma
The Gay Detective
Nick Hern Books, 1996
Set in Dublin, The Gay Detective is a thriller and a love story. When a Garda superintendent discovers that his talented sergeant, Pat, is homosexual he persuades him to make use of this fact in work. Pat tracks down a queer-basher, and also finds Ginger, his first real lover. The investigation turns to the murder of a gay TD. What seemed like a simple agreement with his Garda superior suddenly appears more like a Faustian pact.
QUOTE:
risqué romantic comedy of "About Adam" is still a very challenging piece of work,
Gerard Stembridge
About Adam
Interviewed by Anwar Brett
Considering his feature debut was a dour tale of sexual jealousy and murder, "About Adam" marks a radical change of pace for Irish film maker Gerard Stembridge. Or more accurately his first film, "Guiltrip", was the really shocking film to have made for a man better known for comedy in the theatre and on radio.
Yet the risqué romantic comedy of "About Adam" is still a very challenging piece of work, not least for the sexual ambiguities in its story of a man (Stuart Townsend) who beds three daughters of a middle class Dublin family while engaged to the youngest. If Stembridge was expecting a backlash from the morally outraged, Stembridge has been pleasantly surprised.
"I think the film company were prepared for a backlash of sorts," he explains. "You can tell when they asked their questions at the screenings. But the surprising thing was that it scarcely registered as an issue at the US screenings. If it had been, I would've been very prepared for it because the whole point was to say to cinema audiences that romantic comedy has been defiled for the last few years. That kind of moral world has been narrowed to the point where romantic comedies are really only for kids."
"They're not for adult minds to deal with anymore, and it's always seemed to me that if you look back much further into the history of cinema, to old screwball comedies, you had a much more edgy, much more interesting and ambivalent moral world at work. The relationships with people were far more adult. To me "About Adam" was just a small little nod in the direction of the adult world really, and the trick the film tries to employ - much like Adam does in the story - is to say 'I bet I can charm you with this.' "
QUOTE:
impressive, disturbing glimpse of fear and loathing in a provincial Irish town
Guiltrip
Film
Brutal, bleak, full of the bitterness of life, this isn't much fun. But it's an impressive, disturbing glimpse of fear and loathing in a provincial Irish town. Late at night, Tina (Russell) waits for her army corporal husband Liam (Connolly) to return from work. When he finally makes it, a long argument erupts. Each is suspicious of what the other's been up to. They never find out, but we do. Liam's a calculating skirt-chaser; Tina fancies the wares at a hi-fi shop and also an absurdly enthusiastic salesman (Hanly). Juggling flashbacks, writer/director Stembridge masters a difficult structure: unfolding past and present, building up character, counterpoising word and deed, and finally suggesting a ruinously unbalanced relationship that obscures and distorts issues of blame and guilt. More than just a domestic drama, the film's an unflinching picture of communal discord and alienation amid the banalities of small-town life. It's also an indictment of the place of violence in society: the abuse of personal power and the hopelessness of keepingmilitary-bred qualities confined to barracks. An auspicious debut.
By: NB
Gerry Stembridge
Born 1958
County Limerick, Ireland
Occupation Writer, director, novelist
Notable works Scrap Saturday (1989-91), Ordinary Decent Criminal (2000), Nora (2000), Counting Down (2009)
Gerard "Gerry" Stembridge (b. 1958, County Limerick, Ireland) is an Irish writer, director and actor.[1] He was educated at CBS Sexton Street in Limerick. While attending University College Dublin, he was auditor of the Literary and Historical Society.[2] He taught English and drama at Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Clontarf.
Contents
1 Radio
2 Film career
3 Playwright
4 Novels
5 See also
6 References
7 External links
Radio
He reached significant prominence in Ireland when he co-created the satirical comedy radio programme Scrap Saturday with Dermot Morgan.[1] It became one of the most popular programmes on RTÉ Radio.
Film career
Stembridge wrote the screenplay for Ordinary Decent Criminal (which starred Kevin Spacey and Linda Fiorentino). He co-wrote Nora, a film about James Joyce and Nora Barnacle which starred Ewan McGregor and Susan Lynch. He has directed such films as Guiltrip, Black Day at Black Rock, Alarm and About Adam.[1]
Playwright
A selection of his plays include
1992
Betrayals
Ceaucescu's Ear (Teatru Míc in Bucharest)
Daniel's Hands (City Arts Centre, Dublin)
Denis and Rose (Civic Theatre, Dublin)
The Gay Detective (Project Arts Centre, Dublin)
Love Child
Melting Penguins
That Was Then (Abbey Theatre, Dublin).
The Leaving
Novels
Stembridge's latest novel The Effect of Her was published in 2013. He is also the author of three earlier novels: Unspoken (Old Street Press), Counting Down[3] and According to Luke[4] (both Penguin Ireland).
Gerard Stembridge
Gerard Stembridge
Biography
Gerard Stembridge is an Irish writer and director whose credits include About Adam, Guiltrip, and Alarm. His screenplays include Ordinary Decent Criminal and Nora. He lives in Dublin and Paris.
Gerard Stembridge
Born in Limerick, educated at CBS Sexton Street and at University College Dublin, Gerard Stembridge began his directing career in 1985 working as a producer/director with RTE, the Irish national broadcaster. He left in 1990 to allow more time for writing. Since then he has written for film, TV, theatre and radio, frequently directing his own work. He has written five novels.
anto kane photography
for Film: Guiltrip (1995), About Adam (2000), Ordinary Decent Criminal (2001), Nora (co-written with Pat Murphy) (2001), Alarm (2008)
for TV: The Truth About Claire (1990), Black day at Blackrock (2000) Nothing To It (1988) Commonplaces (1988) The State of Us (2011)
for Theatre: Love Child (1992), The Gay Detective (1996), That Was Then (2003)
for Radio: Scrap Saturday – co-written with Dermot Morgan. (RTE 1990-1992), Daisy the Cow Who Talked (BBC R4 1994), Daylight Robbery (RTE 1999)
Novels: According to Luke (2006), Counting Down (2009), Unspoken (2011), The Effect of Her (2013), What She Saw (2017)
Gerard Stembridge
Gerard Stembridge was born in Limerick. He studied English and History at University College Dublin and has lived in Dublin since. His films include Guiltrip and About Adam. He co-wrote the satirical radio show Scrap Saturday with Dermot Morgan, and more recently the satirical TV series, The State of Us, with Risteard Cooper. He has written eleven plays. His first novel was According to Luke.
Novels
According to Luke (2006)
Counting Down (2009)
Unspoken (2011)
The Effect of Her (2013)
What She Saw (2017)
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Plays
The Gay Detective (1996)
That Was Then (2002)
Gerard Stembridge (b. Limerick, Ireland, 1958) is a writer and a director who has worked extensively in theatre, film, TV and radio. He first became known for his involvement in Irish radio's comedy series Scrap Saturday (created by Dermot Morgan) in the early 1990s. As well as two novels, Stembridge is the screenwriter and director behind 2000's About Adam, starring Stewart Townsend and Kate Hudson. He also wrote the screenplay for Nora (1999), a biopic of James Joyce's wife, starring Ewan McGregor. His stage plays include 1992, Daniel's Hands, Love Child, and That Was Then.
Writes: Plays: 20th Century
Author of : That Was Then
QUOTE:
thoroughly entertaining mix of suspense and setting.
What She Saw
Michele Leber
113.15 (Apr. 1, 2017): p26.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
What She Saw.
By Gerard Stembridge.
May 2017. 320p. Harper, paper, $15.99 (9780062568984); e-book, $9.99 (9780062569004).
What Lana Gibson saw in an exclusive Paris hotel suite was more than just disturbing. The 35-year-old bipolar American woman, living with her executive husband in Dublin, is in a manic phase when she takes off on a whim for an overnight visit to Paris to see the definitive Edward Hopper exhibit there. When Lana finds an elevator used solely for her hotel's Suite Imperial, she can't resist nosing around until she gets a glimpse inside the suite, where she sees a sex party in full swing and a naked old man assaulting a beautiful, fully clad young woman. Appalled, Lana flees and tries to explain what she saw in a phone call to police. Thus begins a 24-hour whirlwind in which Lana discovers that she's become involved in French politics at the highest level, with her life at risk and her assessments of who she can trust repeatedly shaken. Irish writer and director Stembridge creates an indefatigable protagonist, emboldened and energized by her mania, in a chase through the vividly portrayed City of Light. A thoroughly entertaining mix of suspense and setting.--Michele Leber
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Leber, Michele. "What She Saw." Booklist, 1 Apr. 2017, p. 26. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA491487877&it=r&asid=fa38400739bccc137a63e96f6c2afd3b. Accessed 23 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491487877
QUOTE:
satisfyingly twisty 24-hour thrill ride through the heart of contemporary Paris
What She Saw
264.13 (Mar. 27, 2017): p80.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
What She Saw
Gerard Stembridge. Harper, $15.99 trade
paperback (320p) ISBN 978-0-06-256898-4
Irish author Stembridge (The Effect of Her) provides a satisfyingly twisty 24-hour thrill ride through the heart of contemporary Paris. Lana Gibson, an American living in Dublin, decides on a whim to fly to Paris, where she intends to see an art exhibition and not think too hard about an old lover living in the city. At the posh Hotel Le Chevalier, she talks to a beautiful woman in the bar. An hour later, the impulsive Lana slips into the hotel's private elevator, which she knows goes up to a private suite. When the elevator doors open, she spots the woman from the bar resisting the advances of a naked older man. Lana takes photos with her cell phone before the doors close. The man turns out to be Jean-Luc Fournier, an important French politician, and Lana soon finds herself in big trouble. The secondary viewpoint of a frustrated small player in Fournier's organization adds complexity and raises the tension. Agent: Grainne Fox, Fletcher & Company. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"What She Saw." Publishers Weekly, 27 Mar. 2017, p. 80. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA487928114&it=r&asid=aede788e23b02bab14f5edda71087efe. Accessed 23 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A487928114
QUOTE:
Though utterly convincing as a work of social history, Stembridge's novel lacks the narrative drive to form a cohesive whole.
Review: PAPERBACKS: Fiction: Unspoken, by Gerard Stembridge (Old Street, pounds 12.99)
(July 16, 2011): Arts and Entertainment: p19.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2011 Guardian Newspapers. Guardian Newspapers Limited
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian
Byline: Anna Scott
Waiting for his wife to give birth, Fonsie Strong sits in the hospital in anxious silence. It's 1959 and, gathering up the threads of his tale, Stembridge proceeds to explore the birth of a modern Ireland full of potential promise, yet mired in memories of the past. Charting the fortunes of the Strong family, Stembridge also introduces the Machiavellian Dom, an ambitious politician who exudes machismo, and the closeted Gavin Bloom, who works in the new media of TV. As the novel weaves between characters, Dom springs most convincingly to life. In love with the sound of his own voice, power gives him a sexual thrill and his acquisitive pleasure in his beautiful wife is enhanced by his conviction that "none of his political colleagues . . . was married to anyone worth riding". An unlikely candidate for national hero, a sudden epiphany leads him to champion free secondary education for all and he wins a place in his country's collective consciousness. Though utterly convincing as a work of social history, Stembridge's novel lacks the narrative drive to form a cohesive whole.
Anna Scott
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Review: PAPERBACKS: Fiction: Unspoken, by Gerard Stembridge (Old Street, pounds 12.99)." Guardian [London, England], 16 July 2011, p. 19. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA261465156&it=r&asid=e6e831053743484a454f5fc160378853. Accessed 23 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A261465156
Unspoken by Gerard Stembridge – review
by Anna Scott
Friday 15 July 2011 18.55 EDT
First published on Friday 15 July 2011 18.55 EDT
Waiting for his wife to give birth, Fonsie Strong sits in the hospital in anxious silence. It's 1959 and, gathering up the threads of his tale, Stembridge proceeds to explore the birth of a modern Ireland full of potential promise, yet mired in memories of the past. Charting the fortunes of the Strong family, Stembridge also introduces the Machiavellian Dom, an ambitious politician who exudes machismo, and the closeted Gavin Bloom, who works in the new media of TV. As the novel weaves between characters, Dom springs most convincingly to life. In love with the sound of his own voice, power gives him a sexual thrill and his acquisitive pleasure in his beautiful wife is enhanced by his conviction that "none of his political colleagues . . . was married to anyone worth riding". An unlikely candidate for national hero, a sudden epiphany leads him to champion free secondary education for all and he wins a place in his country's collective consciousness. Though utterly convincing as a work of social history, Stembridge's novel lacks the narrative drive to form a cohesive whole. AS
QUOTE:
write a sequel, or sequels, covering the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s. If future volumes are as curious and intriguing as this one, they will be worth the wait.
Review: Fiction: Unspoken by Gerard Stembridge
Old Street, €13.99
June 11 2011 5:00 AM
Gerry Stembridge is an outstanding, if somewhat unacknowledged, Irish artist.
The lack of acknowledgement may have something to do with his versatility -- he has published two novels; directed for theatre and cinema; written screenplays (Ordinary Decent Criminal, starring Kevin Spacey, and Nora, Pat Murphy's film about Nora Barnacle); and created, with the late Dermot Morgan, the hilarious radio satire Scrap Saturday.
Most novelists focus their storytelling on the life of a single hero. Not Stembridge. The 433 pages of Unspoken describe the lives not just of five children born in Limerick on June 17 1959, but of their mothers, fathers and siblings; the careers of their Fianna Fail leaders locally (Donogh O'Malley) and nationally (Eamon de Valera); of a variety of people working in the newly-founded RTE TV service, including Gavin Bloom, a floor manager reminiscent of Charlie Roberts, who did that job on the Late Late Show; and -- not to be mean with the material -- the entire decade of social change that the 1960s embodied, Eurovision Song Contest and all.
The Limerick social spectrum is wide. The central family, the Strongs, may not be dirt-poor but the father, Fonsie, is certainly dirty: he makes his living heaving bags of coal. In the waiting-room of the maternity hospital, he self-consciously hides his grimy hands from the other fathers-to-be: Brendan Barry, a hotel manager; Cormac Kiely, an architect; George Collopy, a religious maniac who works as a traveller for Mattersons Meats; and Michael Liston, a planning expert.
Liston is livid: he hates his wife and suspects her pregnancy is deliberately designed to prevent him taking up a job in the Department of Industry and Commerce in Dublin. He has just got a call "strictly on the QT from a high-up in the department... things were about to change at last... Dev was being moved on, economic regeneration could begin, everything was going to loosen up, especially in the whole area of re-zoning and urban planning".
Dev is indeed being moved on -- June 17 1959 is polling-day in the presidential election. Stembridge dares to imagine how the ancient leader feels and what he fails to see as the lamps are lit in his parlour: "Eamon liked the golden scrim that filled his old eyes like mist on a summer dawn." He also likes the coconut cream biscuits he gets with his tea: the sound of his wife Sinead biting into one "made him crave the elastic sweetness of mallow in his mouth".
Dev's attitude to the changes proposed by "Kenneth" (Ken Whitaker) and "Sean" (Lemass) is hardly progressive. The emigrants that economic expansion will tempt back to Ireland "might well be... lost already, culturally, morally; no longer Irish".
This insularity is in stark contrast to the sophistication of Dom, the Donogh O'Malley character. Dom is a boyo and a bit of a bowsy. A good part of his effort in the novel is devoted to getting off a drink-driving charge. The prosecuting guard won't play ball, so with the help of a Senior Counsel and the connivance of a judge, the case is heard more or less in private, or as it were, "after hours".
Dom's sexual tastes are superior to those of his Fianna Fail colleagues: for them there is "no rustle of silk negligée draped on a chaise longue. More like a crotch rub in the kitchenette of a two-room flat in Phibsborough, beer spilt down a blouse, then pawed at in pretend apology".
Dom envies Charlie Haughey (right), identified here only as "the Lizard son-in-law". Marrying "the boss's daughter" has "worked out well": he's a minister, whereas Dom is only a Parliamentary Secretary. Dom wants to scream at the new Taoiseach Sean Lemass, why am I not in "the f**kin' Jaysus cabinet?"
Anyone interested in Irish political history will find Dom and Dev's interior monologues utterly fascinating. But the fascination rather overshadows the lives of the lesser characters. This is a pity because much of what happens to them is culturally interesting.
For instance, Francis Strong, the son of Fonsie the coalman, develops a passion for Enid Blyton and begins to speak like her characters. Cormac Kiely, the architect, re-designs a Limerick church in line with Vatican Council regulations, so that a child crying in the gallery can't be heard -- a striking symbol of the coming clerical sex-abuse scandals. Brendan Barry, the hotel manager, turns out to be gay and has an affair with Gavin the RTE floor manager.
There is much else besides, including a fascinating description of the filming of Insurrection, Hugh Leonard's commemoration of the 1916 Rising, and a biting portrayal of the journalist John Healy (here called Hanley): "a self-obsessed, self-important, self-righteous, self-loathing peasant intellectual".
Two criticisms have to be made of Unspoken. The first is that the book rambles -- some scenes are badly in need of the blue pencil. The second is that the stories of most of the characters are not so much ended as abandoned. But this fault may prove to be a virtue since the only way to correct it is to write a sequel, or sequels, covering the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s. If future volumes are as curious and intriguing as this one, they will be worth the wait.
Brian Lynch is a novelist, poet and screenwriter
QUOTE:
It all provides an interesting snapshot of an era, but it is neither a proper novel nor a work of non-ficton.
Cramming ten years into one volume literally gives the author no time to develop any cohesive narrative or character development.
THE EFFECT OF HER
BY GERARD STEMBRIDGE (Old Street £20)
By Carla Mckay
Published: 13:32 EDT, 30 May 2013 | Updated: 13:32 EDT, 30 May 2013
The Effect Of Her by Gerard Stembridge
This ambitious historical novel takes up where Stembridge’s last book Unspoken, which spanned the 1960s in Ireland, left off.
Starting in 1970, we are reintroduced to some of the same characters later in their lives (the best of them being the bookish child Francis Strong who does his growing up here), and meet entirely new ones like Mags Perry, an English journalist who has fled to Dublin after a marriage break-up, and CJ, a disgraced politician trying to claw his way back into power.
The decade of the Seventies was politcally seminal in Ireland. Told in yearly chunks, all the landmarks that moved the country forward socially are here - women’s rights, abortion, the Contraceptive Bill and homosexuality.
Real events and real people are woven in with Stembridge’s fictitious cast and nostalgic Seventies signifiers: Radio Luxembourg; discos; Solzhenitsyn; Jonathan Livingstone Seagull.
It all provides an interesting snapshot of an era, but it is neither a proper novel nor a work of non-ficton.
Cramming ten years into one volume literally gives the author no time to develop any cohesive narrative or character development.
QUORE:
If you love thrillers WHAT SHE SAW is one that I recommend.
What She Saw
Gerard Stembridge
Reviewed by Teresa Cross
Posted October 17, 2017
Thriller
WHAT SHE SAW written by Gerard Stembridge is an intriguing story that will remind you to mind your own business. Stembridge created a character that not only comes across mentally unstable at times but also determined to get answers without thinking of the consequences. This combination makes it a great thriller. The story brings in many surprises along the way. A couple of times I wondered like the character, who or what to believe.
A married American woman named Lana Gibson took a vacation to Paris without her husband to experience the city life and her curiosity gets her in over her head. She takes a private elevator one evening to the penthouse where only the elite stays and what she sees haunts her for the rest of her time in Paris. What did she see? She was not even sure herself. Is there anyone that she can trust?
Such a story as WHAT SHE SAW reminds me to not put my curiosity where it does not belong, especially in a country where you are all alone. What a frightful thought. This will keep you hanging on to every page. Stembridge did not have any slow parts that dragged on but kept your attention to the end. It seemed to me that things the main character was running from at the beginning had her running back to it at the end. If you love thrillers WHAT SHE SAW is one that I recommend.
Learn more about What She Saw
SUMMARY
A taut, stylish thriller set over the course of twenty- four hours in Paris—perfect for fans of Chris Pavone's The Expats and Olen Steinhauer's The Tourist.
The storied Hotel Chevalier on Paris’ ritzy Right Bank hosts celebrities, dignitaries, and—for one night—Lana Gibson, an American woman who’s escaped the monotony of her staid married life for a cultural jaunt to the City of Light. As long as she takes her meds, she promises herself, her heightened curiosity and manic elation will stay under control.
But when that curiosity leads her to the hotel’s private elevator which serves only the ultra-elite penthouse Suite Imperial, she spies much more than plush carpets and gilt chandeliers: a young woman caught in the clutches of a threatening-looking older man. Unable to erase the image of the girl in danger from her mind, Lana alerts the police, plunging herself into a firestorm of intrigue and becoming a target.
As she engages in a cat-and-mouse game that plays out across the streets of Paris, it emerges that the older man is a prominent public figure, and the murky situation only offers more questions: Is he being set up? Who stands to gain the most from his downfall? Not knowing who has her best interests at heart, Lana will need to use every ounce of strength and guile as she races to discover the relationship between the truth and what she saw.
Set against the glittering city of Paris, What She Saw is a hypnotic, thoroughly compelling thriller that will leave readers guessing until the final pages.
QUOTE:
the fictionalised and factual segments of The Effect of Her demonstrate different levels of skill and don’t necessarily mesh into a coherent style.
The Effect of Her will be a good summer read, especially among readers for whom the music of what happened in the 1970s is the soundtrack of their lives.
The Effect of Her, by Gerard Stembridge
The ‘Scrap Saturday’ writer returns to political satire for his fourth novel
Christina Hunt Mahony
Thu, Oct 17, 2013, 12:26
First published:
Sat, Jun 15, 2013, 01:00
Book Title:
The Effect of Her
ISBN-13:
978-1908699329
Author:
Gerard Stembridge
Publisher:
Old Street Publishing
Guideline Price:
Sterling8.99
Gerard Stembridge’s work as screenwriter and novelist is well known to Irish audiences. His brilliant scripting of Ordinary Decent Criminal set the bar for screenwriting, although Stembridge is perhaps more closely identified with his broadcast work, especially the memorable political lampooning of Scrap Saturday, written with the late Dermot Morgan.
In The Effect of Her, his fourth novel, Stembridge is writing in full political-satire mode once again and also attempting to encapsulate an Irish zeitgeist. This book is meant to do for the 1970s what his novel Unspoken did for the 1960s, with chapters taking place in each year of the decade. His enigmatic title derives from a quote from George Eliot’s Middlemarch, which also serves as an unlikely epigraph. (It is worth recalling that Eliot’s great novel bears the subtitle A Study of Provincial Life.)
The literary connection signals one of the book’s recurring strands. Joyce and Myles, along with Solzhenitsyn, Waugh and others, are quoted and analysed. A thirst for challenging books and their lingering effect distinguishes many of the book’s teenage or young adult characters. This alone would set the period apart from today’s world, but somehow the result, rather than making the 1970s come alive, seems more like the opening of a time capsule.
Stembridge’s creative undertaking is far more complex than its bright turquoise and orange cover might suggest.
The author uses the familiar device of introducing three parallel and eventually connecting plots. One limns the apparent downfall and resurrection of a very recognisable cabinet minister, CJ; another tracks the romance between the fiery redheaded journalist Mags Perry and Michael Liston, CJ’s right-hand man; the third appears in the form of the seemingly unrelated, and lacklustre, lives of Francis and Marion Strong, two of Ann and Fonzie Strong’s five children. The Strong family and Liston are among the recycled characters from Stembridge’s earlier fiction and, like the author, hail from Limerick. These storylines will eventually merge in a gay coming-of-age tale, one of the many relationships that form and re-form throughout the 10 years that pass in these pages.
The Effect of Her relates, in nonfictionalised detail, the social and political events that rocked Ireland in the 1970s, including the arms trial and the rise of the Irish women’s liberation movement, including Garret FitzGerald’s unscheduled appearance on The Late Late Show to challenge some of the movement’s assertions. (The FitzGerald character is archly drawn: he is referred to only as “Dr Garret FitzGerald”, with his interior monologues ending in exclamation points, as though he suffers from an excess of eureka moments.)
Stembridge loads his narrative with one headline story after another, especially those about sex, political scandal, violence and rock’n’roll: the media frenzy surrounding the contraceptive train to Belfast; Liam Cosgrave voting against his own government on the contraception bill; the Herrema kidnapping; the shock of Bloody Sunday and the Munich and Ewart-Biggs assassinations; and the opening of Mount Temple comprehensive school, cradle of U2.
His teenage boys are fixated on listening to Radio Luxembourg and on growing their hair as long as possible; his teenage girls, and their mothers, are having their collective consciousness doggedly raised. With its additional emphasis on pop music and local bands, the cut and colour of their trendy clothes and shoes and what passed for fashionable drinks and innovative cuisine, The Effect of Her is a retro-chic treasure trove.
The more overtly political elements of the narrative are sharply in focus, with some of the acerbic comedy that made Scrap Saturday great. Stembridge is adept at laying bare middle-aged male insecurity, with all its compensatory pomposity and competitiveness. Little effort is made to turn raw facts into a sustained fiction, although he does grant his characters the occasional ruminating moment, which can only be imaginative. Otherwise, large sections of the book read as though taken from newspaper accounts of the day.
Herein may lie part of the trouble at the heart of this book: the fictionalised and factual segments of The Effect of Her demonstrate different levels of skill and don’t necessarily mesh into a coherent style. Stembridge has a propensity to tell us, and then tell us again, when we should be shown instead. There is too much connective tissue in these pages, which no doubt works better in a screenplay.
Period detail, such as a Tupperware house party, adds authenticity and colour, but it is far too easy to bog a book down in mundane detail. This is a shame, as some of the writing is compelling, especially the interleaved segments towards the end of the novel in which examples of the patriarchal control of family planning by male legislators and doctors is paralleled with male dominance and abuse within the home.
Stembridge is also capable of creating viable characters. He does innocence very convincingly, and his teenagers can be heartbreaking. We cheer for Francis Strong when he grows up and breaks free of the constraints of a home and school that have failed to nurture him. But we also care about Mags Perry in her search for happiness after a failed marriage. Even Michael Liston, not an essentially likeable figure, engages our sympathies at times. Stembridge’s experimental representation of the private and public Terry Keane (here Ann Teresa and Terry), while not as successful, operates within a layer of complexity that newspaper headlines and gossip columns can’t reveal.
The Effect of Her will be a good summer read, especially among readers for whom the music of what happened in the 1970s is the soundtrack of their lives.
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GHTLY STRUCTURED and pacily written, Counting Downis a compelling 21st-century morality tale which explores what happens when reason and personal responsibility are surrendered to the forces of myth and superstition. The novel also brings a changing Ireland into focus.
the novel registers cultural and attitudinal change through characters’ thoughts and conversations, subtly challenging us to measure our own prejudices against theirs in the process.
The nick of time
Sat, Jan 31, 2009, 00:00
FICTION: Liam Harte reviews Counting DownBy Gerard Stembridge Penguin Ireland, 311pp. €14.99
GERARD Stembridge’s second novel, his follow-up to According to Luke (2006), introduces us to Joe Power, a Dublin-based adman and ex-husband of Juliet, with whom he has a young son, Milo. Set in 2005, the action begins with this dyspeptic divorcee trying to kill time in a Longford village before his first access visit with Milo.
Stumbling upon a car-boot sale, his eye falls upon a curious object that turns out to be a digital clock, programmed to countdown to the year 2000 and then expire. When the seller insists on telling how he came by this 1970s novelty item, Joe is drawn into a strange, supernatural story of how the clock’s original owner, a gay barrister, met his death on the stroke of the millennium, which also happened to be the night that Milo was conceived.
Intrigued, Joe takes the clock to Juliet, who supplies the batteries that re-activate this mysterious timepiece, which quickly becomes the controlling obsession of Joe’s life. Thoughts of what the disappearing seconds might portend disrupt his daily routines and alter his view of time and the future. Whereas ordinary clocks “told time as if there was no beginning or end”, the flickering digits of this plastic sphere seem pregnant with predictive power as they advance towards a pre-ordained end point. But whose doom is being foretold?
Having calculated that the countdown will reach zero in a matter of weeks, Joe becomes convinced that Juliet’s days are numbered, on the assumption that it was she who restarted the clock. What then should he do? Tell her or leave it to chance? What if he and Milo are also in peril? Might he be able to influence the course of events by staying close to her as zero hour approaches? Is he a messenger of death or a messiah who might stay the hand of fate?
Stembridge skilfully ratchets up the suspense, manoeuvring his protagonist into various time-themed scenarios and injecting fresh piquancy into the many time-worn phrases that pepper the narrative: “free time”, “dead time”, “time well spent”, “Time up”. As a character, Joe grows in complexity as we witness the seething misogyny behind his sociable façade, his silent contempt for his male friends and his disdain for the meretricious patter of the 30-second commercial: “The truth was he no longer believed any of it: the lazy laddish voice designed to encourage lazy laddish twenty-somethings to choose a certain bank; the languid cool voice that was supposed to link your success to a certain car; the soothing older voice that made mums and dads trust its promise of a pleasure-filled retirement”.
And still the clock ticks. As the digits pulse towards zero, Joe is gripped by “a kind of banshee superstition” that panics him into rash action, the outcome of which appears to confirm the clock’s prophetic power. Yet nagging doubts remain, doubts that compel him to seek out the original owner’s partner, Roger Merriman, who thwarts Joe’s desire for certainty by suggesting the clock had nothing to do with his partner’s dramatic death. Merriman frustrates him further by revealing that the clock was intended as a satirical response to the idea of planned obsolescence, a joke sweetened by the fact that it has outlasted the French firm that made it.
Joe is in no mood for jokes, however. His need to believe that some mystical force controls his fate blinds him to any suggestion that the clock is merely “a randomly dysfunctional piece of seventies kitsch”.
After he cheats death for a second time, he becomes convinced he has a guaranteed life-span and cannot die until the clock decrees it. This secret knowledge breeds in him a chilling sense of reckless invincibility and superiority, and unleashes his latent capacity for calculated malevolence. Perceiving himself to be free of all agency and responsibility, Joe Power becomes destiny’s monster, inured to human feeling, ruthlessly pursuing his selfish ends.
TIGHTLY STRUCTURED and pacily written, Counting Downis a compelling 21st-century morality tale which explores what happens when reason and personal responsibility are surrendered to the forces of myth and superstition. The novel also brings a changing Ireland into focus.
As one would expect of a writer of Stembridge’s pedigree, the look and feel of contemporary Dublin are convincingly recreated, as are the idiosyncrasies of speech and social interaction.
Yet while he displays a sharp eye for new trends and stresses, he spurns the modes of satiric realism that are a feature of much recent Irish fiction. Instead, the novel registers cultural and attitudinal change through characters’ thoughts and conversations, subtly challenging us to measure our own prejudices against theirs in the process.
And so the impression of Dublin we are left with is that of a city in flux, its increasingly multi-ethnic character visible through Joe’s daily encounters with Latvian, Polish and Chinese immigrants, whom he thinks of as “our very own serf-race”, scurrying about the city while “most of Ireland slept in bloated contentment”.
In the graceless domain that Counting Down conjures up, these anonymous incomers ultimately tend to command more sympathy than the self-absorbed, gluttonous natives.
Liam Harte’s The Literature of the Irish in Britain: Autobiography and Memoir, 1725-2001will shortly be published by Palgrave Macmillan. He teaches Irish and modern literature at the University of Manchester
QUOTE:
is an ambitious and somewhat uneven performance, full of human warmth and social detail. It is an old-fashioned kind of book, a sort of subdued, more forgiving Vanity Fair with an Irish historical setting.
Little picture, big history
Sat, Jun 11, 2011, 01:00
FICTION: KEVIN POWERreviews UnspokenBy Gerard Stembridge Old Street, 433pp. £12.99
GERARD STEMBRIDGE’S third novel is an ambitious and somewhat uneven performance, full of human warmth and social detail. It is an old-fashioned kind of book, a sort of subdued, more forgiving Vanity Fairwith an Irish historical setting. Stembridge may be writing about Ireland under a Fianna Fáil government, during a period of economic growth, over a decade of increasing liberalisation and prosperity – but don’t panic: Unspokenisn’t a Celtic Tiger novel. It’s about Ireland in the 1960s, and it’s a proper saga.
There is no central character as such, but the narrative strands gather themselves around a working-class Limerick family, the Strongs. The opening sentence alerts us to Stembridge’s desire to fuse the personal with the political: “Ann Strong did not vote in the presidential election because, on that June evening, her waters broke.” Fonsie, Ann’s husband, is a coalman, who will eventually see his fortunes transformed as the nation is opened up to new business. As he waits in the delivery room Fonsie muses on the other fathers who wait with him: “Five children would . . . grow up sharing an important detail of their lives. Would their paths ever cross?”
Well, yes and no. Unspokenoffers no great, sweeping historical narrative to hang on to. Throughout its length it remains steadily fixed on what you might call little-picture history, the tiny ways in which lives glance off other lives. The cumulative effect may be panoramic but the page-by-page focus is intimate and calm. Stembridge builds his picture of a changing country scene by scene, as it were brick by brick, so that the novel’s true shape only starts to become visible about halfway through.
This is, of course, the method of the dramatist or film-maker, and Stembridge has form in both worlds. From his role as writer and producer on the seminal RTÉ radio series Scrap Saturday(which he developed with the late Dermot Morgan), Stembridge moved on to write and direct plays such as The Gay Detective(1996) and Denis and Rose(2002), and to make films including Guiltrip(1995), About Adam(2000) and Black Day at Blackrock(2001).
Throughout his career Stembridge has displayed the instincts of a popular entertainer, but his entertainments have generally been tempered by a journalistic urge to seize and reflect upon the manners and moods of his time. About Adam gleamed with the boutique splendour of the first years of the property bubble, but also, beneath the dodgy Dublin accents, subtly exposed the bright-eyed emptiness of the period. That Was Then(Abbey Theatre, 2003) was ahead of the game in offering a satire of working-class property developers made good.
He moved into fiction with According to Luke(2006) and Counting Down(2009). The first of these deals in mildly comic terms with the family of a corrupt Fianna Fáil politician, and is hampered by its over-reliance on contemporary news stories as trendy narrative markers, perhaps a consequence of its original serialisation in the Dubliner. Counting Down, about a man who buys a mysterious clock that ticks away the seconds until his death, never quite escapes the constraints of its Twilight Zone-like premise.
Unspokenis a different sort of book, conceived along the lines of a Victorian epic. It is divided into 10 sections covering 1959 to 1969, one for each year, and follows a varied assortment of characters: the ageing, increasingly blind Éamon de Valera during his first term as president; Gavin Bloom, a homosexual floor manager at the brand-new Teilifís Éireann; cameraman Baz Molloy; architect Corman Kiely; a young and rapacious Charles J Haughey (known as “the Lizard”); and, most movingly, Dom, or Donogh O’Malley, Limerick man and minister for education under Seán Lemass, who made education free for Irish children. And representing the plain people of Ireland, there is the Strong family.
Through the not-especially-grandiose experiences and reflections of these characters the larger picture comes into focus: Unspoken is about the arrival of modernity, new Ireland versus old. Bit by bit, the 20th century takes over and Dev’s vision, literally and figuratively, ebbs away. Television, pop music, Vatican II, foreign investment, a housing boom: each year some new thing chips away at the comely-maidens-dancing utopia envisioned by the founder of Fianna Fáil.
This is very well done, despite the occasional cliche (“dancing eyes”, “watched him like a hawk”) and tautology (“he eavesdropped surreptitiously”). The book’s length and steadfast devotion to the ordinary make for occasional longueurs – do we really need to read the whole of Donogh O’Malley’s speech to the journalists’ union? And the lack of a central narrative line beyond the general drift of events can leave the later sections of the novel feeling rather loose and baggy. But generally Stembridge’s narrative skill keeps things clipping along, and his ability to summon the atmosphere of a cabinet meeting (where pipes are smoked as “symbols of unhurried intelligence”) or to put us inside Dev’s mind as he addresses the US congress offers many pleasures.
Towards the end of the book Baz Molloy sets out to make a documentary about modern Ireland. As he watches his assembled footage he notes that it offers “less a narrative than a feeling, an atmosphere”. This is a clue to Stembridge’s method in Unspoken. He is reminding us that the larger moods of history begin in the small moods of individual moments. And he has done an excellent job of capturing both.
KEVIN POWERis a novelist and teaches creative writing at University College Dublin. He is the author of Bad Day in Blackrock, published by Pocket Books