Please tell us about the narratives that make up Openings? Were there any thematic strands that bring the collection together? And interestingly, my first collection, Multitudes , was very much Belfast girlhood and young womanhood. My second collection, Intimacies , was motherhood. And when it came to writing the stories in Openings , I found I had greater technical abilities.
I had greater range. I could sense it. When I finished the collection and put the stories together, I realised that the title story held the key. And the title story is Openings. I think what binds the stories together is the idea of how we stay open to life. In the stories I was exploring how easy it is to shut down, or to become brittle, or to become ground down by experience, or to become closed or defensive.
And the stories are about how to stay open to the wonder of the world, and of people, and of curiosity, and learning new things. That would be the thematic note, I think, that all the stories are asking in different ways. In some stories of Openings, and more so in Multitudes , you use the rarely opted for second-person narratorial voice. What does that aesthetic choice, in your opinion, do in terms of tonality for the story?
Another brilliant question, yes. I like to ventriloquise my characters. And also, if a story is told first-person past tense, it becomes a summary of experience. Your question was about tone, and that was so perfect, because what I found with the second-person is that you get a tone of intimacy, of tenderness, of compassion, that first-person is too brittle. Third-person is too knowing, too omniscient.
But second-person, you get this lovely sense of a quiet compassion. Do you see short fiction as particularly placed to literarily represent fragmented contemporary existences in the aftermath of a global pandemic, as we struggle with the climate crisis and late-stage capitalism? Your questions are absolutely brilliant. A short story, on the other hand, you can capture a moment, like Fresco style, it can be rapid response.
