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INTERVIEW:His first novel, ‘ John the Revelator’, is generating quite a buzz among Ireland’s literary establishment, but ‘ Hot Press’journalist Peter Murphy is happy to position himself on the outside, writes C atherine Cleary

THERE IS A SMALL grove of laurel trees by a pond on the outskirts of Enniscorthy in Co Wexford. Underfoot are dry brown leaves, overhead a dome of branches. Peter Murphy stands here remembering how he sat as a 10-year-old boy with his bicycle beside him. Across the swamp through the treetops he could just make out the backs of brontosaurs. We are on a short tour of the ordinary and secret places in the Wexford landscape that inspired and appear in Murphy’s novel John the Revelator. The debut novel is the product of eight years of writing, a workshop formed by fluke and Murphy’s iron determination to produce something worthwhile before the chance passed him by.