Interview with Booker-nominated Sebastian Barry: 'There’s a huge amount of humour in it, in being alive'

With a fifth nomination for the prestigious Booker Prize under his belt, one may be forgiven for assuming author Sebastian Barry has an ego the size of a thousand moons. On the contrary, his humility and generosity of spirit is obvious within the first few seconds of conversation. 

Speaking to me over the phone from the side of a road outside Coolboy, Barry is reminded of the very first time he was nominated for the Booker eighteen years ago. 

'I was driving on the M50 when the publicist rang from Faber, that was in 2005, and I nearly crashed the car I was so surprised,' he says. 

This surprise hasn’t lulled over the years despite an illustrious and decorated career; over half of his published novels have been Booker nominated, a feat accomplished by a rare few. 

He says, 'It’s always strange to have your name associated with something like that. There’s a sort of mystery to it. It just makes me feel, if nothing else, that you haven’t been entirely wasting your time, that there’s something there and that there’s a quality in books maybe independent of the writer, in a funny sort of way.' 

Competition for the Booker Prize - awarded annually to the author of the best eligible work of long-form fiction published in Ireland or the UK - is stiff, with the longlist chosen from a pool of 163 submitted books. 

Each year, the judges endeavour to choose a novel that, according to the Booker website, 'not only speaks to our current times, but also one that will endure and join the pantheon of great literature'. 

Barry says, 'You’re always dealing with a different group of judges. It’s not just the picking of a book; their tastes are involved and their lives but also their dynamic between eachother. And that’s why sometimes on longlists very good books are left off because of that mysterious human process.' 

Although he had hoped to see Claire Kilroy’s book "Soldier, Sailor"- which he described as 'tremendous' - on the longlist, he believes authors must be prepared not to be on it regardless of whether they personally think - or have been told - their book is good. 

'I’m quite good at preparing myself not to be on it,' he says, 'But you can’t really prepare yourself for being on it because it hits you with a kind of joy that is more like childhood joy than adult joy.'

He continues, 'All these books of mine are connected, so they’re related to eachother, almost literally; they’re family books, made-up family books, but still. There’s nine of them and having spent, I think, thirty years writing them, it is a large recompense to feel that five out of those nine managed by these miraculous means to get onto [the Booker] longlist.' 

Barry’s latest book, Old God’s Time - which tells the tale of a retired policeman called Tom Kettle as he grapples with his haunting past - joins twelve other titles on the 2023 longlist. 

Describing the story, Barry says, ‘[Tom] has had nine months of victorious solitude with quiet happiness, and his two colleagues come from his old division to ask him about a case he was involved with in the sixties, the murder of a priest who was an abuser.' 

But although it sounds like a detective novel, Barry says it's not. 

He says, 'Tom had been in charge of that [case] and because it’s so close to [him] it sort of cascades his brain and his brain is undone by it, so he’s desperately trying to hold onto his sanity that is getting away from him. 

'That’s really what the book is about - how do you deal with your traumatic memories when you’re forced to think about them again? 

'In that way it’s a difficult book, but at the same time I loved Tom Kettle and I loved the fact he was kind of funny. I mean, he’s on his own, so who’s laughing? We are, you know, his readers. He doesn’t even know he’s amusing, he probably doesn’t even know he’s courageous, but he is. 

'It’s also a book about our so-called normal human courage in the face of the terrible, terrible things that can happen to people, and they remain invisible to us. The person walking in the street may have burdens that you just can’t see. It’s trying to get at the interior burden of people, and the reason for doing that is in the interest of renewal and escape from those things, even if there is no escape and there is no renewal.' 

The story was inspired by a glimpse through a door in Dalkey when he was just a boy. 

'We were just back from London so I was in a rather heightened state because I had a London accent,' he explains. 'When I went to Dalkey National School, an accent like that was a prescription for being murdered in the school yard, so I had to learn really quickly to be an Irish person again. 

'We were living in the flat at Queenstown Castle like in the book with my mother and my sister. My father had stayed in London and my grandfather was with us, and I looked in a door one day and I saw this man sitting there in a little annex that the landlord had built for some reason against the castle.

'He was sitting in a wicker chair in the middle of the floor looking out to sea. It was a very bare room, and he was smoking a little cigarillo, I remember that, and I just saw him for a moment, really, and I never spoke to him that I remember, but for some reason he remained with me.' 

Barry continues, 'Having quite a troubled family, quite a troubled childhood, somehow he was able to be my kind of seer and hearer of certain problems that had troubled me all my life, so I feel really grateful to Tom Kettle because he was able to [sic] into that fear, that trouble of child abuse and all the things that were so dangerous to us as children when we were in the fifties and sixties, whether it was at school or at home. 

'There was a lot of danger of that sort, and I always wanted to write about it - I always wondered could I write about it - because the first thing you’re told as a child in relation to anything like that is not to say anything. There was a huge silence.' 

Despite his passion for the story and his determination to tell it, he was 'terribly worried' about the reaction to the book. 

'To be honest I thought people wouldn’t be able to cope with this,' he says, 'I’m sure some people would quite rightly not want to head into such a difficult thing, for good reason. But generally speaking I just sort of felt this honey back from people, a honey of thanks and gratitude, but in a kind of human way, not in a high falutin’ way. 

'It actually gives a kind of recompense to the reader just to voice it, and so many people have said “keep talking about it, keep talking about it”, even now. I mean, Sinéad O’Connor, the great hero of this whole [sic], tore up the pope’s photo in 1992 and it wasn’t until the mid 90s when people began - and even in the Gardaí - to realise what needed to be done. 

'She was so before her time, and here we are in 2023 and there’s still a kind of silence.' 

Old God’s Time was described by The Guardian’s Declan Ryan as 'a tribute to enduring love and its ability to light up the dark' and, although Barry doesn’t read reviews of his books, he agrees with the analysis. 

'June, you see, is his wife or was his wife,' he says, 'She is an amalgam in some ways of my own brilliant wife, and also of that very special person, the person you fell in love with when you were sixteen. 

'To reconnect with that powerful feeling for another human being that Tom has for June, I knew it was the thing that kept me going in the book. Any time I was with that I was in a state of such wild admiration for the both of them, and I wanted to celebrate that and our ability as very dubious creatures to love, truly to love, and to itemise that and to try to describe that.' 

He continues, 'Technically speaking, this is part of the book that will put petrol in the engine of the reader, that they’ll be able to get through some of the darker thicket of the book. It’s quite blatantly obvious that not only does Tom love June, but he loves her well and properly.' 

The shortlist of six books will be announced on September 2, with the winner - and recipient of the £50,000 prize - due to be revealed at an event at Old Billingsgate in London on November 26, 2023. 

Barry refuses to speculate on whether this is his year. 

He says, 'I would never project into the future, that way madness lies, as King Lear says. I’m just trying to get a hold of the fact I’m on this list, I’m 68 so it’s another strange integer for me. I was wondering am I getting a bit old to be on the Booker longlist, but of course the great Barbara Kingsolver is my age, so that wasn’t going to be an out for me if I hadn’t been on it.' 

Although he harbours a natural desire for his work to be well received, he says, 'I’m always very conscious and remind myself the robin in the hedge doesn’t give a damn what we do, it doesn’t think it’s anything important in this great grand scheme of things.

'But at the same time, as it is the thing that I do, if you’re going to farm you’d rather farm well, or you’d rather somebody thought you were farming well.' 

He recalls being in South East Wicklow and noticing the craftsmanship of a local carpenter. 

He says, 'I can see how respected he is because he makes a straight window, so to make a straight novel, it is lovely to hear that somebody thinks that you have managed to do that.' 

Despite the dark subject matter of some of his stories, Barry says he has 'absolutely loved making' his books 'even when they're as dark as a giraffe's tongue, which is black I'll have you know'. 

He says, 'Even when they’re dark and difficult, even then they are a joy to make, because it’s the thing that’s been given to you to do, and you’ve done it. 

'There’s no better feeling than that extra speed in your legs when you just want to get in there to be with the book and see what it’s going to do today.' 

However, he believes his views on writing may be seen as 'very odd' by other writers. 

He says, 'When I was Laureate [for Irish Fiction 2018 - 2021], I was more aware of that because I did these podcasts with my fellow writers, and I remember my lovely friend Colm Toibín saying he hated writing, and I was almost ashamed. 

'I think the difficult part of being a writer, or the whole business of being a writer, is not writing, it’s when you’re waiting; when you’re waiting to be assailed by a book, to have it build up in you like the water gathering in the well after a few buckets have been taken out and you want it to fill up again and to be brimming, and that can be a long wait. 

'I do enjoy it immensely, enjoyment isn’t even the word for it. It’s when I feel most centred in the world. Yeats said he was a fool everywhere except at his desk, which is a sentiment I really understand.' 

Barry draws on his own life and experience to populate his novels, stating, 'I couldn't do it any other way.' 

He says, 'If you’re inventing people like Tom Kettle in Old God’s Time, what can you give him only your own childhood memories, even the memories you have of your own children? You’ve nothing else to give your character, everything has been drawn in, but in a very particular way.

'It isn’t as a flashy inundation, it’s not a flood; there’s something interestingly precise about it, it’s as if you are restoring a Georgian window and you have to have the proportions right, it’s all about the proportions.’ 

One third of the 2023 longlist is made up of Irish writers, with Elaine Feeney, Paul Lynch and Paul Murray picking up nods for "How to Build a Boat", "Prophet Song" and "The Bee Sting", respectively.  

Barry says, 'I do think there is an enduring quality about Irish work because we’re a small island and we’re almost obliged to think about where we are, who we are, how we interact with other people; we’re obliged to do that, and there is a sense that Irish writers are doing that par excellence.' 

He describes one writer in particular - the esteemed Séamus Heaney - as 'the best example' of how to be a writer in the world. 

Barry says, 'He had a lovely way of just being at his ease. He had an accommodation with other people, a handshake, and he was such a great writer - that’s almost a different matter, a different question - he was very supportive and very careful of other people. And when he died there were about 20,000 writers who said, “Oh my god, he was so nice to me personally”, because he took the trouble to do that. He answered every letter he ever received. 

'There is a way to be in the world. You can be like Michel Houellebecq, the French writer - you don’t have to be a good person to be a writer - but it’s very interesting to see somebody like Séamus Heaney, to have witnessed him and interacted with him because you can learn from that.' 

He concludes, 'Irish writers have some degree of journalistic integrity. The goodness in people is far and beyond the kind of goodness we were told about as children, say by priests or nuns or whatever. It’s actually tried and tested; it’s like you’ve hit the tuning fork of life and you want to get a clear proper note out of it, and I love that about Irish writers, I love that about all writers.'