‘Ireland was in such a state in the 1980s, people were fleeing. We’re coming back to that’

Books

Karl Geary’s new novel set in recession-hit Dublin explores a repetitive cycle that constantly lets young people down

Niamh Donnelly
Sat Mar 4 2023 - 05:00

It’s a blustery January afternoon, and Karl Geary is sitting across from me in the Clarence Hotel in Dublin. The author and former actor is visiting from Glasgow in Scotland to talk about his forthcoming novel, Juno Loves Legs, but it’s not long before we’re on the topic of hotels and housing.

“I walked here, we’re in a five-star hotel, and Dublin is awash with five-star hotels and it’s awash with homeless people,” he remarks. “I’m writing about the ‘80s, and it’s not out of nostalgia ... it’s looking at this repetitive cycle that we’re in [where] things aren’t changing.”

The recession-hit Dublin of the 1980s has provided the setting for Geary’s fiction to date. His 2017 Costa-shortlisted debut, Montpelier Parade, told of the unlikely relationship between a butcher’s apprentice and an older woman. His luminous and heartbreaking second novel, Juno Loves Legs, tells of two misfits (Juno and “Legs”) who grow up on the same housing estate. Their friendship is their only safeguard against a world that constantly lets them down.

“I didn’t want to tell that story at all,” Geary says. “I was really far along with an entirely different book. And it was funny, I’ve a little studio in Glasgow, and on my way to work, I would stop and have a little coffee, and just take these notes on my phone. And then I would get to the studio and do the real work.”

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Of course, the notes were in fact the “real work”, and the headstrong and misunderstood Juno “elbowed and kneed her way” into his psych and on to the page.

The book paints a picture of a penniless, church-fearing society that in some ways is leaning towards modernity, but more often is hamstrung by old habits, ideas and institutions. The way in which individuals are failed by the structures around them, and the repetitive nature of these failures throughout history, is something that interests Geary.

“We can look at Ireland and go: 800 years of colonial rule. And then we had 100 years of Catholicism that’s now starting to recede. And [in] the ‘80s ... there was a shift and this kind of move towards modernity and a sweet spot in there where I felt people could take a breath. And then we immediately went back into a new oppressor, and corporatism comes into play, and it becomes the new Catholicism for us.”

Geary is one of many who left Ireland in the 1980s for more opportunities and a better quality of life. “We call ourselves expats, but the reality was that Ireland was in such a state at that time, people were fleeing the country in incredible ways. I think, probably, we’re close to coming back to that stage.”

Soon after moving to New York, Geary’s life took off on an astonishing trajectory

The difference now, however, is that the country has been developed extensively and should be able to accommodate its citizens. “At least when I was leaving the country was all, kind of, in ruins. People now are leaving and ... everything’s glossy, and shiny, and five-star hotels, and Google, and Facebook, and Apple, and people are driving around in expensive cars.”

Geary was just 16 when he left for New York in the US, having grown up in Blackrock, Co Dublin the youngest of eight siblings. He left school before doing his Inter Cert, worked for a brief stint in a wallpaper shop, then packed his bags.

In the East Village he found what “in retrospect, you called a scene, but we didn’t know it was a scene”. It was a creatively fertile, if gritty, place where he could fill in the gaps in his education by reading, and exchanging books and ideas with friends.

“There was this kind of concentrated ... community, where there was a lot of people trying to figure stuff out. And you could live there and only work two, three days a week, as a waiter or in a video shop, or in a bookshop. You could do that stuff and still live. And so, you had time. And that commodity of time is what’s stolen, particularly now, I think, from young people. You come out of college, you have to go get money, you don’t get to think, you don’t get to look around and go: is the system working?”

Soon after moving to New York, Geary’s life took off on an astonishing trajectory. His friend, Shane Doyle, invited him to help run Sin-é, a music venue that would soon become legendary in music circles. Known for giving Jeff Buckley his start, it was the kind of spot where you might stumble upon a performance by the likes of Paul Brady and Marianne Faithful, the Hothouse Flowers or U2. Through this work Geary got to know the photo editor of Rolling Stone, which led him to “one of the least interesting things I get asked about most”, posing beside a topless Madonna in her infamous Sex book. His acting career also began to grow legs, and he would eventually go on to write his own screenplays (readers might remember Geary as Coffey in the 2008 horror, The Burrowers, the Irish doorman in Sex and the City, or Billy Hayes in the 2003 comedy drama, Coney Island Baby, the screenplay for which he also wrote).

“You know, it’s interesting. I’ve spoken a lot over the years [about] things like Sin-é and, various films and stuff. And I think there’s a sense [of] wasn’t it great? You go off and you have these experiences, and look at that, you’ve pulled yourself up by your bootstraps ... [But] that’s not the whole story. That’s just not true,” he says.

I honestly believe people want basic things ... They want to be educated. They want to feel safe

—  Karl Geary

“The truth is nobody pulls themselves up by their bootstraps. That can’t happen unless you have help, and I had help. People helped me. And I think that narrative is a way to pummel people from the same class base as I come from; to go, well he did well, why didn’t you? ... And instead of a problem with the system we live in, it becomes a personal moral failing. So, the onus of guilt is put back on the person.”

Class is a big theme in Juno Loves Legs, and is brought to life through subtle yet significant behaviours, such as the way certain customers of Juno’s mother (a dressmaker) refuse to touch off anything in their house.

“[A]s soon as they got inside they swept a look from floor to ceiling and their bodies stiffened.”

The things the characters long for, and are so often denied, are basic – love, care, education, housing. As such, their suffering is heightened because it feels so unnecessary.

“I honestly believe people want basic things,” Geary says. “They want to be educated. They want to feel safe. They want to have medical assistance if needed. Basic stuff. And if you look at the disparity of wealth, particularly in Ireland, but all over the world now, it’s unprecedented. And unless your conversation includes that it’s a middle-class project, and it weaponises people against their own best interests.”

Alongside class, the book manages to touch on a wide range of issues such as homelessness, the Aids crisis, corporal punishment, Catholic church abuse and more.

“I specifically didn’t want to talk about sexual abuse, because then it becomes a sexual abuse story. And that’s all anyone reads,” he says. “I think there’s an array of other abuses.”

Geary is careful and constrained writer, whose self-editing is “really dogmatic – I’m probably too quick to throw things away”. As a person, meanwhile, he seems openhearted. He talks to interest on just about any topic I throw his way, offering deep but unpretentious answers.

I think the ‘everyday-ness’ is really important

—  Karl Geary

Day to day, his life has calmed down somewhat compared to his heady New York days. He lives in Glasgow and is married to the actor Laura Fraser (A Knight’s Tale, Breaking Bad). His own acting career is dormant – “I never settled in well. It doesn’t suit me as a person ... I was always in a perpetual state of panic” – though he has written a screenplay for Montpelier Parade.

“It was really good, interesting, to go and do that again,” he says.

But it is the relationship between reader and writer that interests him most.

“I love cinema, I really do. But cinema now has been transformed and it’s become a kind of a spectacle. There’s very little independent film gets made and if it does get made it usually has to have a star attached, which is less interesting to me ... The relationship between the reader and the writer – that place where they meet ... where the reader has to show up with their imagination, and they have to do a little bit of work, and you hopefully have done enough work that they can have that experience. It’s kind of alchemy, isn’t it?”

[ Montpelier Parade by Karl Geary review: Spinning hearts in 1980s Dublin ]

Having spent four years at work on Juno Loves Legs, he finds himself “at a loss” in some ways.

“If you’re invested in [a writing project], you’re seeing on a different level. You’re taking in the world in a way that you feel more alive.”

Without that, “you’re waiting for a voice to show up. You can’t force it”.

The only way to proceed, he believes, is to show up at the desk every day.

“I think the ‘everyday-ness’ is really important. Because it’s like anything. It’s like a boxer ... You’ve got to stay in shape, so that if something happens, you can identify it.”

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