Nuala O’Connor

by

Seaborne by Nuala O’Connor

Formative Years Bring a Taste of Freedom

rebel pirate woman adventure Irish literature

Seaborne is an adventure story about a young girl born in Kinsale, Cork to a maid, who, in order to keep her with her, styles her as a boy growing up, so she can stay in her father’s house (a local lawyer) and be apprenticed to him.

Anne becomes Anthony in her childhood and loves nothing more than going out on the boat with her father, being at sea.

Eventually, in order that her parents can be together, the man abandons his wife and family, and travels with Anne and her mother to the Carolina’s where he will run a plantation.

Life As A Girl is Restricted

But Anne having had significant freedom as a boy is none too pleased by the restrictions and rules that presenting as a girl puts upon her.

‘Three times trouble, girl, with your red hair, and your forward manner, and your obsession with water and boats. For a lady, one is ill luck and the others are ill conduct. The three do not match well.’

And I give my ever honest reply. ‘They match the finest with me, Father.’

Finding a Way to Seascape

She finds solace and much more, with her friend and servant Bedelia and finds a way to have the occasional sea journey thanks to a young man they hear of, Gabriel Bonny, who for a few coins will take a person to sea. At first he declines to take her, she will visit a tailor and have a set of clothes made, more suitable for seafaring, eventually she wins him over, he can not refuse her.

I woke this day knowing only one thing: I wanted to hire a boat, row it out, and feel saltwind about my face and hair. I desired to have nothing but the sway of the sea under my body and I determined to make that happen.

Seeing him as a way to escape her destiny and to a life at or near the sea, she elopes with him, taking Bedelia with her.

Passion, Piracy and Plunder

Photo by brenoanp on Pexels.com

In the town where they settle Anne discovers that her husband isn’t so keen to let her pursue her dream to be at sea. She becomes restless and rebels against the wifely life and in her restless wanderings, she comes across someone who will.

Captain Calico Jack will allow her to follow him and his crew into dangerous territory and a life she had never imagined but finds passion and excitement in.

I crave a chance to wave my sword, to fire a shot. I want to know how it feels to own such power. And I think of the riches that await us, and the wandering sea-life Jack and I will have when we have plenty of money.

They will sail around the islands of the Caribbean, looking for opportunity, trying to avoid those in service to Governor Rogers, a man with a mission to suppress piracy and protect trade, who was hell bent on apprehending the infamous pirate and his men.

A Maverick Maiden

Set in the 1700’s, Anne Bonny is a real character, though much about her is legendary and not easily verifiable. Nuala O’Connor has familiarised herself with facts and read the fictions and re-imagined a version of a deeply unconventional life for Anny Bonny, told in a lilting, of its era prose.

It is narrated in a way that allows the reader to easily visualise the life and surroundings she inhabits and the high sea adventures she participates in, even if they are shortlived. It’s a fun, imaginative read, of a woman before her time, who gave herself freedoms and lived fearlessly, despite the era she lived in and the culture she came from.

Further Reading

Irish Daily Mail: I’m Always Willing to follow a historical female maverick to see where her story leads me

RTE Radio 1 Interview: 39th Cúirt International Festival of Literature

Author, Nuala O’Connor

Nuala O’Connor is a novelist, short story writer and poet, and lives in County Galway with her family.

She is the author of four previous novels, including Nora: A Love Story of Nora and James Joyce (2021), Becoming Belle (2018) and Miss Emily (2015), a reimagining of the life of Emily Dickinson, and six short story collections, her most recent being Joyride to Jupiter (2017) and Birdie (2020).

She has won many prizes for her short fiction including the Francis MacManus Award, the James Joyce Quarterly Fiction Contest and the UK’s Short Fiction Journal Prize and been nominated for numerous prizes including the Edge Hill Short Story Prize, the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award, the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year and the International Dublin Literary Award. Nora was shortlisted for the 2021 An Post Irish Book Awards RTÉ Audience voice Award. She is editor-in-chief at flash e-zine Splonk.

by

Miss Emily by Nuala O’Connor

Nuala O’Connor is the Irish author I discovered in 2014 thanks to the Irish Times Book Club.

You may remember last year, I read and reviewed her novel The Closet of Savage Mementos which she wrote under her Irish name Nuala Ní Chonchúir. That novel was about an Irish girl who left Dublin for a Scottish seaside town after the death of her boyfriend and to escape her mother’s dramas. In Scotland she encountered her own drama and was forced to make a life-changing decision.

Emily Dickinson and an Irish Maid

Now, writing as Nuala O’Connor for US and UK  readers, she pens the story of another Irish woman, the feisty but hard-working Ada, who also leaves Dublin, destined to become housemaid to the Dickinson family. It is a fictional account of the friendship between the Irish maid and the poet Emily Dickinson.

Ada Concannon, the eldest of 7 children, possesses an energetic zest for life that was unappreciated by her previous employer; upon being demoted to scullery maid she decides to seek her fortune elsewhere, taking a passage on the boat to New England where her Aunt Mary, Uncle Michael and a couple of not too friendly cousins reside.

She lands on her feet with the job at the Dickinson household, a family of four with their spinster sisters Vinnie and Emily, neighbours to their gruff brother Austin and his wife Sue, whom Emily appears to (not very convincingly) pine for.

The American Frugal Housewife

The Frugal Housewife

Emily is reluctant to leave the house, preferring words to company and attaches herself to Ada, the kitchen being one of her preferred refuges, thus friendship with the housemaid most important.

Her friendship with the maid flouts convention and is a kind of quiet rebellion within the home that the poet rarely steps out of.

“When I talk too much, everything I think and feel is wrung from me. I have nothing to write about when all is spent. It takes me so long to restore myself. It is as if I must heal a wound after each party where all is chitchat and glances and fun.”

Ada is adept in the kitchen, devoted to the family and the book The Frugal Housewife that Mrs Dickinson has lent her.

“Think of this as your second Bible,” she said.

Ada is charmed by the quiet and unassuming Daniel Byrne, her stay marred only by the creepy presence of the nephew of Daniel’s boss, Patrick Crohan.

Chapters alternate between Miss Emily’s and Ada’s perspective to reveal brief but eventful encounters in the kitchen and rooms of the Dickinson home, between Ada, Miss Emily and those around them.

Although Ada is outgoing and attractive, she still has something of the Irish reserve and tendency to silence when there is trouble. And trouble there will be. Ada and Emily must attempt to navigate the narrow space between their classes to deal with the trouble, without compromising their reputations.

Miss Emily is a lively, charming read, she brings her characters to life, especially the Irish and creates a world we can quickly imagine and inhabit. There is something comfortable and reassuring in her prose and novels that makes you want to abandon all else until the last page is turned. Just as she did with Savage Mementos, so too she achieves with Miss Emily. My only regret is that it all ends too soon, I’m still wondering about Ada and could easily follow after her into a sequel.

“For now I need the solace of words. Words bracket silence. That quiet gives propulsion to the words and all that they say. Words smoulder, they catch fire, they are volcanic eruptions, waiting to explode. I like to start small. With the fewest words I can manage. If the words run away, I trip them up and pull them back – they are elastic. If they do not cooperate, I obliterate them.”

Miss Emily audio