In Depth
Straight from the heart
06.12.07 Benedicte Page
Given that in Cecelia Ahern's novels everyday life takes on a magical tinge, it's appropriate that she herself has had what looks like a charmed career. She made her name with her début novel, PS, I Love You, written when she was just 21, which reached number one in her native Ireland and made it into Richard and Judy's Summer Reads. Then the book was optioned by Warner Bros, and now a glamorous film starring Hilary Swank and Lisa Kudrow will be released just after Christmas.
Still only 26, Ahern is now a well-established author, with her fifth novel, Thanks for the Memories, coming from HarperCollins in April. Meanwhile, she is also busy cracking US television: her new ABC comedy series about a woman amnesiac, "Samantha Who?", was, at the time of this interview, the number one comedy in the States in its début season.
What does this petite, fragile-looking young woman put her storming success down to? "It has been pretty incredible," she admits. "This year I've had two months off, which is the first time I've really had any time not working. But I just keep coming up with new things, new ideas; even if I'm tired, I can't sleep, I get so excited, I'm hopping up and down, I have to do it. If I get an idea and I think it's a good one, I have to tell the world."
The ABC comedy came about after a phone call from the head of development at the US TV network. "They asked: 'Would I like to write something?', and I thought: 'Yes, definitely!' I went over, there were three days of pitching to studios, I was so scared I almost dropped dead—I pitched and pitched, met with writers and producers, and chose the people I felt would work well for the series. They were saying: 'Well, it's a very slim chance it'll even make pilot stage', and I was saying: 'I didn't expect it to.' Then it was picked up as a pilot and they said: 'There's a very slim chance it'll actually go to air', and then it was picked up. At every stage, I've been going: 'I don't know what's going on!' It's a lot of luck, a lot of hard work, a lot of good people around me."
Just go for it
Ahern also says that she'll never try to force a half-hearted idea: "If I'm in any way 50/50 about something, if I don't feel it, then I won't do it. If I feel good about something, I'm willing to just go for it, despite my nerves and anxiety."
The new novel, Thanks for the Memories, is a return to the deeply romantic feel of PS, I Love You, in which a wife followed instructions in a series of letters written by her late husband to help her get over him. Here Joyce, not very happily married, miscarries her first child and needs a blood transfusion; meanwhile, divorced and lonely Justin, trying to impress a potential girlfriend, arrives in Dublin to give an art lecture and is persuaded for the first time to give blood.
Of course, the blood in question passes from Justin to Joyce, and suddenly a magical connection arises between them; Joyce can speak three languages and is knowledgeable about art, and has strange memories of a blonde-haired child (actually Justin's daughter). Throughout the novel, their paths repeatedly cross briefly and diverge, as these two closely connected strangers take the long way round to love.
Ahern says she was struck, on seeing a TV clip of blood going through a tube, with exactly what was involved in blood transfusion. "For the first time I thought: 'That's part of somebody, a connection so personal, something that comes literally from the heart.' And a few days later, there was this documentary on heart transplants and how people who received them suddenly got the tastes and qualities of the people who donated them: people would wake up and suddenly want beer when they'd never drunk beer before, and it turned out the donor was a big beer drinker. As soon as I heard that, I thought: 'I'm definitely going to go with the idea. I like to go with something out of the box.' I like to see the extraordinary in the ordinary; the magic in my novels is the little extraordinary thing in real life."
Ahern is undaunted by writing a novel about two 30-something protagonists damaged by life's harsher experiences, despite her own youthfulness. "You won't spot any of my characters dreaming about shoes and handbags. The number one thing that shocked me with PS, I Love You was that people said: 'She's so young, how would she know [about the grieving process]?' It didn't matter that I got the emotions right for people. But I know what it's like to be sad and happy and confused; I'd known that since I was born. You don't suddenly start feeling when you're 30. There's a man in Dublin who's 78 years old and he's read PS, I Love You six times. It came out when he lost his wife and he loves it."
Staying politic
Famously, Cecelia is the daughter of Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern. She says this is less of an issue now than when she started writing. "At the beginning, there were people who said: 'She only got this deal because she's his daughter.' There were people at home who refused to buy the book because they thought it had only been published for that reason. There were also people who went out and bought it because I was his daughter and they wanted to read it for that reason—so I think it balanced out. People didn't know how long I'd be around. But nobody's debating with me about it any more.
"I've never felt I've written something and then deleted it because my dad's who he is, but then I'm not that kind of a writer. I'm fairly balanced about things—nothing is too severe or too extreme—and I think that's just the person I am as a result of growing up in a home where your parents always have to see both sides of everything. You have to be like that when you negotiate. My father's always looking at the two sides."
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