A WEST of Ireland publisher has been forced to shred 900 copies of a new book of poetry and prose by Aosdána member Rita Ann Higgins due to family concerns about some of the content.
A new edition of the book is being printed this week by Salmon Publishing, in time for Saturday’s official publication date in Galway.
However, the author said she was very disappointed at the turn of events, which has cost the publisher several thousand euro.
Higgins, who has won a number of awards, said the controversy arose when she received a phone call from one of her siblings in New York.
"I had given an advance copy of the book, entitled Hurting God, to my sister in Dublin on the way to the airport, and she sent me a text to say it was brilliant," Higgins said.
“However, I then got a message to ring home. My brother Joe was very angry about a reference to him in the opening essay.”
The collection, which is described as “part essay, part rhyme”, has an autobiographical theme and deals with “God, púcas, jiving factory girls, a crocodile-wielding father, long-lost lives and equally long-lost multi-nationals”.
“I had related a family anecdote about my brother, and my mother’s reaction to the situation back then,” Higgins said.
“I’ve never had a cross word with Joe. The irony is that he had asked me to write something on the occasion of an honorary doctorate which he received some years ago from NUI Galway for his work in business.”
An exchange of correspondence resulted in the publisher, Jessie Lendennie, taking the decision to shred 900 printed copies, and to amend the piece of prose, and a separate reference in the introduction. All family names associated with the author were also deleted.
Ms Lendennie said that it had cost the publisher to reprint, and the delay in supplying books to the bookshops had also made the exercise more expensive.
“However, it would have been worse if the book could not have been published. I want to emphasise Rita Ann’s right to her own personal memories, and, of course, our right to publish excellent literature,” Ms Lendennie said yesterday.
“In these essays, Rita Ann is totally true to her early life; to her background in the Galway of the 1960s and 70s. The nature of memoir is that it is told from a single perspective,” she said.
Mr Higgins was founder of J Higgins Engineering in Galway, a successful company which he subsequently sold, and he has since developed other business interests. He did not respond to inquiries from this newspaper yesterday.