Louise Kennedy
Take Four Books
Author Louise Kennedy discusses her second novel, Stations, which explores the enduring bond between two teenagers in 1980s Ireland and Lond
Key takeaways
- The novel Stations follows characters Roisin and Red through the landscape of the Irish Midlands and London.
- Kennedy draws parallels between her family's migration from Northern Ireland and the characters' movements.
Main topics
- Stations novel plot
- Irish migration and the Troubles
Notable quotes
I'm sick of everybody that's wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It's disgusting.
Conclusion
A profound exploration of how personal memory and classic literature i
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) This BBC podcast is supported by ads Speaker 1 (0:02) outside the UK. Speaker 2 (0:09) Welcome to the Haunted Library. Have you come in search of a tale? This podcast invites you to browse the shelves and find stories that will linger long after you've left this place. From gothic masterpieces to pulpy penny dreadfuls, join me, Colin Morgan, with new episodes twice a week. Find The Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 3 (0:38) Welcome to the programme where an author tells us about their new novel and reveals three other works that inspired its creation. My guest today, Louise Kennedy, worked for 30 years as a chef before a friend cajoled her into joining a creative writing group. Safe to say that this was a life-changing moment. Her debut collection of short stories, The End of the World is a Cul-de-sac, won the prestigious John McGahern Prize. And then in 2022, her debut novel, Trespasses, was a huge critical and commercial success. A Sunday Times bestseller, it was also nominated for no less than eight awards, including short listings for the British Book Awards, Book of the Year, and the Women's Prize for Fiction. Now she returns with her second novel, Stations, a tale of enduring teenage friendship and love that begins in the 1980s and goes on to span three decades as it moves back and forth between Ireland and London. Louise Kennedy, welcome to Take Four Books. Thank you very much, Jamie. It's great to be here. Louise, you're here to talk about your new novel, Stations, and the three works that influenced it. And you've picked a unique collaboration between a photographer and a writer. that documents Irish migration, a searing memoir of homelessness in London, and the great J.D. Salinger's novella about two siblings, Difficult Transition to Adulthood, Franny and Zooey. But first, Louise, let's turn to your new novel, Stations. It's a story of a bond forged between two teenagers, Roisin and Red, who are growing up in small-town Ireland in the 1980s. And it begins with Roisin acting as a messenger. to pass read a love letter sent from another girl, which in today's world of texts and Snapchat feels wonderfully archaic, doesn't it? Yeah, Speaker 4 (2:17) it's very old-fashioned, all right, isn't it? Yeah, in the days when we wrote notes and letters and so on. Yeah, so Roisin is, she's a recent blow into a fairly dreary town in the Irish Midlands. Her family had moved a few years earlier. from the north of Ireland for various reasons to do with the Troubles. Mainly actually that her father was a Catholic but also a member of the RUC which would have been considered to be quite a sectarian force at the time. So that caused problems when they lived in the north. But now that they're in the south... It's also a problem. So that's a secret that she has to hold for her family. And also, she's really deeply unpopular in school. And I suppose in order to gain favour with her mentor, she offers to carry this letter because Tina, the mean girl. is going out with, although she can't actually get out of the house, with a boy called Red, who's sort of the bad boy around the place. And when Roisin carries the first letter, they realise that they probably have more in common and more to talk about than Red. Yeah, it kind Speaker 3 (3:20) of Speaker 4 (3:20) backfires, doesn't it? It sort of does. They have more in common than Red and the horrible Tina have. And this friendship starts. Speaker 3 (3:28) Yeah, I mean, talk about Roisin and Red. I mean, both are bookish. Yeah. Both are whip smart. And both in different ways. feel out of place in their small town, don't they? Speaker 4 (3:37) Yeah, I think they are. I think, yeah, they're probably a bit precocious. I think for Roisin, it's maybe because she spends a lot of time by herself and reads and listens to music and sort of maybe she has to have this fairly vivid inner life to... balance the fact that her day-to-day life in school is a bit miserable and also that her home life isn't great either because she's an only child, she lives with her mother. In the 1980s, a lot of Irish people... left for work and went to Britain. And it wasn't just my generation. I mean, certainly a lot of us did. But some of our parents had to leave too because there wasn't any work. So Roisin and her mother have, you know, they left the North as a family, the three of them. The father has gone supposedly to find work, but there's actually no sign of him coming back. So that's another source of, I suppose, conflict in her life. Speaker 3 (4:31) So Roisin, she's looking. perhaps without even knowing it for a kindred spirit. Absolutely. And she just so happens to find it in this book. She Speaker 4 (4:38) does, very unexpectedly. Yeah, and I think, you know, the book is, it's written in the third person, but it's a really, really close third person point of view. So everything that the reader knows comes from Roti and it's what she thinks and what she sees. And I think that maybe... Red is certainly, you know, the most well-read person. He certainly has a lot of taste like hers. Their humour, straight away, they realise they have a similar sense of humour and they're sparking off each other from the beginning. But also, I think, because she's so isolated, from the outset, she invests a lot in Red and the idea of Red. Speaker 3 (5:13) I wonder if you could give us a short reading now, Louise. This is Red coming to spend Christmas Day with Roisin and her mother, Una. OK, so Speaker 4 (5:21) this is maybe, it's probably... It's probably about a year into their friendship and it's Christmas morning. Red has come the previous day and he's helped to peel the spuds and he's been stoking the fire and all the rest of it. So, in the morning, there were two small piles of presents under the tree. Una had knitted Red a mohair jumper, red and black striped. He hugged her and put it on over his T-shirt. For Roisin, there were new jeans that she was too self-conscious to try on, but she kissed her mother anyway. A selection box, diary, socks for each of them. Una, her mother, handed her an envelope. The card inside had a photograph of a poinsettia and it was stippled with silver glitter, to my dear daughter at Christmas printed in an old-fashioned script. A hundred pounds sterling from her father in newly minted twenties, more money than she'd ever held at once. Roisin gave her mother a Monet calendar and Red a copy of the Brothers Karamazov, gifts she had bought from Mags, who owned the bookshop she worked in, using her staff discount. Red gave each of them a jam jar containing pieces of paper he said were vouchers for services. Una could avail of washing the car, cleaning the oven, cutting the grass. Her mother exclaimed that it was the most thoughtful and creative present ever and kissed him on the forehead. Roisin opened hers, trying not to betray her excitement. He'd promised maths grinds, French conversation, friendship for life. She couldn't read the latter aloud and put it back in. Speaker 3 (6:58) That was Louise Kennedy reading from her new novel, Stations. There are a couple of critical details in that little passage, aren't there, Louise? First of all, the red and black Dennis the Menace jumper that Una... gives to Red, which remains as a motif throughout the novel. And then there's Red's gift to Roisin, a voucher for friendship for life. And the ability or not for Red to actually redeem that voucher is in many ways the story of this novel, isn't it? Speaker 4 (7:27) Yeah, I guess it is. I mean, it's certainly something that later on Roisin goes back to. And, you know, I think it's something, I mean, later on, actually, a couple of days later, Speaker 4 (7:41) You know, a couple of days later when they're talking, Roisin says, I'll be your friend for life too. And he says, no, you won't. But that's OK. And I think he knows from the outset, he knows a lot more than she does. And Speaker 3 (7:55) tell Speaker 4 (7:56) us, Speaker 3 (7:56) Louise, about the shift of the story then to London. You know, the type of hard, subsistence life that read and then Roisin find there. Speaker 4 (8:04) Yeah. Well, I really had pains to say that Roisin is not me. However, and I'm saying that because routine is a bit of a dose, frankly. But... Like Roisin, my family left the north of Ireland in 1979 when I was 12. Like Roisin, we moved to a small, not very exciting town in the Irish Midlands. I was terribly unpopular at school and it was the 1980s. And like Roisin, I made for London and so did pretty much everybody I knew. And that was a funny thing because, you know, Ireland was in a very, very deep recession. And I mean, I suppose it had been really for years, maybe since the foundation of the state. When we actually finally got out of that and