Derry-born Antonia Logue's first novel, Shadow-Box, It is bound to attract considerably more interest than first novels usually receive: the rights to the book were auctioned for £66,000 sterling in 1996, on the basis of the first six pages and an outline. Antonia Logue was 23 at the time.
Shadow-Box is the fictional story of three actual characters; the black boxer Jack Johnson and the poets Mina Loy and Arthur Cravan. They are not household names. "I had never heard of them either until I came across a long poem by Paul Muldoon called Yarrow," explains Logue. "He refers to Mina Loy and Arthur Cravan in that poem. I got interested in them. I wanted to know more."
Logue, who was working as a freelance journalist at the time after completing a degree in English at Trinity, went to the TCD library and did some research on Loy and Cravan. "Another name kept coming up; Jack Johnson. I got a biography of him out of the stacks and I read it. I wanted to write a novel about real people, and the more I read about these three characters, the more I felt there was enough in them to make a novel."
Cravan's collected poems are in French and have never been translated. Logue's teenage years in Belgium, where her father was working with the European Commission, meant that she had enough fluency in French to understand them. "Otherwise the novel would never have been written, because almost everything about Cravan is in French."
She cites Michael Ondatjee's book, Coming Through Slaughter, about a black jazz singer, as being a seminal influence on her own work. "Reading that book made me think that I could try and write about things that seemed beyond me; take on issues such as racism. It inspired me. I felt I wanted to take risks with my own work."
Although there are several detailed accounts of boxing matches in Shadow-Box, and locations include Mexico, New York, and Barcelona, Logue did all her research from books. "The book is mostly set in the early part of the century and in the 1940s, so I was writing about a different period," she points out. "Even if I had gone to these places, they wouldn't exist as they were, as they've changed immeasurably in the meantime."
She had written about half the novel when she reached a crisis of faith and plot. Ireland being the small place it is, she had come to the attention of other writers by then, including Colm Toibin. "I knew him slightly. He introduced me to an agent at A. P. Watt. I sent them the first six pages of the novel. That's the first piece of writing I had ever showed anyone.
"They flew me over to London and shipped me round the publishers, giving me a chance to talk about what I wanted to write. They all wanted to see more of the novel, but the more interested people were getting, the more tense I got. I wouldn't show them any more." When the rights were auctioned on the strength of those six pages, "nobody was more surprised than me. It was fantastical in the literal sense. It changed my life. It lifted all my financial worries and gave me the freedom to be able to write every day."
Antonia Logue handed in her manuscript last June. By then she had moved from Dublin to West Cork. She now lives in Castletownsend, continuing to write full time, including book reviews for newspapers and periodicals. "There were too many distractions living in the city," she explains. "I'd go out for half an hour and come back five hours later."
She is working an average of six hours each day at the moment on her next book, which she is reluctant to give too many details about. "It's set in the 1910s and 1990s, about two men whose lives connect," she offers. "One character is a real-life person and the other isn't. It's going to be a book about power again - the effect of it and how you acquire power and what you do with it once you have it." She reckons it will take her another three years to complete.
"If I can continue to make a living from it. I would love to keep writing for the rest of my life," she says. "I have loads of books I want to write." Does she feel much pressure from the impending and long-awaited publication of Shadow-Box, whose first few pages are likely to be read with close attention by every aspiring writer, not to mention ordinary readers? There is a long, considered silence.
"It's the best book that I'm able to write," is the answer. "I've read the proof copy, because that still seems like it's not a real book, but I'll never read the actual published book," she states firmly. "There are so many things wrong with it. I'll read the proof copy again some day and probably roll my eyes, but I'll never be ashamed of it." She smiles. "Are writers ever fully happy with what they write?"