Mere pages into Nesting, the debut novel from Roisín O’Donnell, Ciara Fay makes a life-altering decision. After discovering she’s pregnant for the third time, she takes her two young daughters, throws them and some hastily-gathered possessions in the car, and flees her emotionally abusive husband Ryan. Though Ciara often doubts whether the flaws in her relationship are all in her head, something pushes her to get away while she can.
So begins an odyssey to find shelter, a home, and ultimately peace of mind for Ciara and her daughters. Due to Ireland’s lack of affordable housing, Ciara and the girls find themselves living indefinitely in a hotel in Dublin, where Ciara must check in every night while waiting for more substantial government support that seems doomed never to arrive. All the while, she struggles to resist Ryan’s continued attempts to draw her back into their dysfunctional marriage.
O’Donnell, who has also published the short story collection Wild Quiet (2018) in Ireland, grew up in Sheffield, England, and is now based in Dublin. To write Nesting, she thoroughly researched Ireland’s hotel accommodation policies, spoke to women who had escaped abusive relationships, and drew on her own experience of single-parenting young children. “I remember breastfeeding the baby and writing on my phone with the other hand,” she tells me on our Zoom conversation, laughing. “I think there is really something to be said for writing from the coalface of life. There’s this ideal of the writer sitting in a lovely, quiet room at a beautiful desk and having no outside interruptions. But I think there is actually a really strong quality you can bring to the page when you have a very busy life that you’re somehow able to channel that into the prose.”
O’Donnell brings these granular details to her portrait of a woman learning to live on her own terms, for herself and for her children. In our conversation, we discussed the craft of novel-writing, resisting the temptation of the trauma plot, the bureaucratic hurdles that women face when leaving abusive relationships, and more.
Morgan Leigh Davies: I want to start off by asking about the shift from writing short stories to writing a novel.
Roisín O’Donnell: It definitely was a big change. I had always wanted to write a novel, but I hadn’t planned on doing so at that particular stage in my life. I suppose I found that the short form fitted better into my life. I was working full-time and single-parenting two children. Time was in quite limited supply. With the short form I found that, crucially, I could get a first draft on the page before I ran out of confidence and gave up on it. Once you’ve got that first draft, then you have something to work with.
I was actually commissioned to write a short story; that’s where Nesting began. I was contacted out of the blue by a radio station and asked to write a short story on the theme of independence. We were coming up to the centenary of Irish independence, and they were asking writers to reflect on what that word meant to them. And that was the keystone that seemed to unlock these ideas that I was thinking about. It was 2020, the height of lockdown, and I was hearing all these messages about, Stay home, stay safe. I just always had this thought in my head: What if you don’t have a home to start off with; what if home is actually the least safe space that you could be?
So I wrote a short story called “Present Perfect,” and it was just one day in the life of a woman called Ciara Fay. She sort of barged into my imagination. My first glimpse of her, she was kneeling on a grubby hotel carpet trying to get gloves and coats on these two little kids, dashing out the door, trying to get to work—there was just something about her. She had this real energy, this real defiance, and yet she was incredibly vulnerable. I knew that she was a survivor of domestic abuse; that is mentioned a little bit in the story.
The story was read for radio, and normally that would be it. Everyone would say, nice working with you, and the project was done. But for me, it just wasn’t complete. I think I had a real feeling, which I hadn’t experienced with any short story before, as if the story was straining against the form. It wanted more space.
I had a real reluctance, at first, to actually take the project on board. As I said, the timing wasn’t ideal. And I had a real sense of, Well, can I do this? Can I do justice to this idea? But I just kept getting ideas for different scenes—something would float into my mind, a snippet of dialogue, or maybe a scene in the hotel, or something to do with Ciara and her ex. And I just thought, Right, okay, I’m going to start following the story and see where it leads.
It was only that point that I realized the technique that I had been using with short stories. Looking back, what I used to do was almost carry a story in my mind. I could be churning over an idea for months at a time before actually getting to the desk and writing the story down. Whereas with a novel, you can’t do that; you can’t hold a whole novel in your head. So for me, it was a real learning process. I think I have developed so much in terms of my craft, that I actually had to embrace that vulnerability of not knowing what would happen next and really put myself in Ciara’s shoes and allow the energy of the narrative to guide me.
MLD: Do you think that helped your writing, that so much of the book is also about being in-between places and not knowing what is going to happen next?
RO: Oh, definitely. I had to embrace that feeling of vulnerability. I think that if I had sat down and plotted the whole book and had a very clear idea of what was going to happen to Ciara, it would have been a very different novel, and perhaps would have felt less authentic. I think that putting myself completely in her shoes and embracing that vulnerability, definitely lent something to the narrative.
When I was starting out as a writer, I studied with Claire Keegan. She was someone who was really influential on my formative years as a writer. She talks about the character’s instincts and following the story almost through bodily awareness, through your senses. She’s a fabulous, fabulous teacher. She’ll say, First the nose and then, maybe, the feet. And what she means is, Follow the character’s instincts, lead with the senses, follow their desire. What is Ciara’s desire in Nesting? It’s security, it’s safety, it’s a reprieve from the stress that she’s under: That is the instinct that she’s constantly following. My job was almost to keep out of her way, and follow her path and see where it led.
MLD: Of course, you can write a short story about this kind of abusive relationship that is very emotionally affecting. But her getting repeatedly sucked back in, and then trying to push away—the cyclical nature of that felt to me like something that can only really happen in a long form narrative. How much were you thinking about that as you were writing?
RO: The longer form allowed for a greater level of realism, definitely. I had done some research when I was writing the short story, and one of the facts I came across was that it takes an average of seven times for women to leave an abusive relationship, and to leave permanently. That really stuck in my head. What is the driving force behind that? I wanted to create this character of Ciara, who is very three-dimensional and believable and authentic, and to explore what is going on psychologically for her.
Shame and fear and guilt are the key tools Ryan uses to manipulate her into coming back. A key decision that I made really early on was that I was going to start the novel much earlier than the short story. With the short story, it’s almost like the pinnacle of the mountain, whereas with the novel, you begin further down the slope. I made this decision that I’m going to bring the reader into Ciara’s home. I’m going to be very upfront and show exactly what she’s living with, so that we really follow the journey with her.
I suppose the other way of doing things that I feel would be maybe a bit more common, is to withhold that information and to use the trauma as a reveal, as a plot device. When I started writing Nesting, I did have in mind to structure it like that, so that it would start with her leaving, and we would gradually become aware of why she had left. But I realized I actually don’t. I don’t trust that as a form of writing. I just don’t like the use of someone’s trauma as a plot device. So that seemed like quite a radical, risky move at the time, to get the reader on board from those first pages, being very upfront by showing what Ciara is trying to escape. But I think in terms of the scheme of the novel, it really worked out because it gives you a clearer idea of just how difficult it is to break free from that type of psychological control.
MLD: For much of the novel, Ciara and her children live in a hotel that is used for homeless accommodation, and she is on a quest to find somewhere to live that is more permanent. I’m curious about this horrible process that she is trapped in throughout so much of the book, and the research you did into that.
RO: I knew that housing was going to be a big issue for Ciara, just because it’s such a dominant issue in Ireland at the moment. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been impacted in some way. It’s to do with rising house prices, and there’s a shortage of places to rent, and the rents have skyrocketed. So Ciara has left a controlling home environment, but she finds herself living in emergency accommodation, a hotel that is very controlled. She has to sign in to the hotel every evening. There are very strict limitations on what they’re allowed to do or not do. There are no cooking facilities in the room. As she gets to know some of the other residents, they tell her the ways they found to try to circumvent some of these rules, but it’s extremely difficult.
I’m glad that you used the word quest, actually. That was really important to me when I was writing. I really did think of it as a quest narrative, in the same way as an old medieval text about, you know, trying to find the crown or the kingdom. Ciara’s kingdom that she’s trying to find is a home, but I think she is confused about exactly what it is she’s looking for. She does come to that realization that it’s not just a house that she needs. This idea of home is not just as a place to live, but as a place where you’re experiencing a sense of freedom to be yourself, and a sense of security and a sense of peace. That is so much more than just having a physical place to live in.
MLD: The bureaucracy they face is also overwhelming.
RO: It’s a minefield. I went down so many tunnels of research to make sure that I was getting that right. At one point, a friend who was reading it said, Do you have to be so picky about making sure that you’re naming the exact policy and that you’ve got the exact correct amount of money that she needs? You’re causing yourself a lot of stress. Does it need to be that precise? And I said, Yeah, it does. It does because that’s where the authenticity is coming from. I really do think that, in particular, that’s where we find the universal, and that’s where I felt that it’s going to really bring the story alive, to make it feel vivid and real.
MLD: I don’t know about these specific policies, but it felt authentically Kafkaesque. It makes it so clear that the entire system is organized against anyone leaving these relationships.
RO: And there’s the difficulty of reaching out and accessing the supports that are there. I don’t want to make it seem as if that there isn’t support. But for much of the novel, Ciara doesn’t actually reach out and access the woman’s refuge. She doesn’t really acknowledge what’s happened. I think that is very common with people I’ve spoken to. She’s been constantly told by Ryan that there’s nothing wrong, that she’s the one with the problem. So she finds it difficult to then reach out for support.
But you’re right. It is a huge ordeal that she has to go through. You could say, Is it worth it? Does she make the right decision? As a writer, you’re always trying to find the universal within a story, the point at which readers can connect. I think there are so many ways in our lives that we can find ourselves, maybe a shift, or in the wrong place, whether it’s in the wrong relationship, in the wrong job, and making a change is not going to be easy. To make her life whole, Ciara has to completely break everything in order to hopefully move towards a more hopeful place. I think that’s something that a lot of people can identify with, for different reasons.
MLD: I also wanted to ask about the support and solidarity that she is able to build with other people once she has sort of escaped, because we see that she has been alienated from other people in her relationship.
RO: It’s very common that an abusive partner will alienate their partner’s friends and family, and the woman can become very, very isolated, to the point where a repeated line in Nesting is, I cannot hear myself think. Ciara just can’t get a grasp on what’s happening, because the only voice in her head has been Ryan’s voice. She hasn’t had close friends and family to give her another perspective. I wanted to show that it’s a bit like the light being let back in after the door has been closed for so long.
Cathy, who lives in the room next door to her, is a very forthright character, and really puts Ciara in her place in a lot of ways, and brings a different perspective. She then makes friends with Diego, who’s a hotel worker from Brazil, and he helps her to reconnect with her memories of traveling. She’s taught and worked in Brazil. She’s becoming more in tune with her past, allowing memories back in that she hasn’t thought about for a long time, and becoming herself again.
I remember one of the women that I’d spoken to when I was doing research saying to me that she felt that her life was saved by the kindness of strangers on a regular basis. In her case, her husband was emotionally abusive, and he would quite often give her the silent treatment. So she might have had a weekend where he hadn’t spoken to her at all, but she would go to the shops, and in Ireland, we are quite chatty, and she’d be queuing up to pay for something at the till, and someone might say something to her—you know, terrible weather, or I like your hat, something small, and she’d have maybe a two-minute conversation, and she said it was like a gulp of oxygen. That really stuck in my mind.
The idea of these small interactions is something that worries me. I feel as if so many things now are becoming automated, and you can actually go to the shops and come home without having spoken to anyone. Communities are not as tight-knit as they used to be. I think it’s something really important for us to hold on to, because it’s that human connection which really can be so life-giving, especially to someone in Ciara’s position.
MLD: It makes me think, too, that you were saying you started writing this in lockdown.
RO: It was shortly after lockdown, I think, that she actually left the relationship, because she said it really opened her eyes to the void that was there when she didn’t have those interactions with people outside of her home.
MLD: I remember reading statistics about the uptick in domestic violence, which was horrible, but totally made sense.
RO: It’s not a good thing, but I feel in Ireland, there’s more conversation about it now than there used to be. I feel that COVID definitely lifted the lid on a lot of that, and that there are far more discussions now than there used to be.
MLD: So you feel that that’s changed in a notable way, in the last few years?
RO: I think it is changing. You definitely hear more conversations about domestic abuse, about coercive control. There’ve been more cases in the news. I just feel that it is gradually becoming a topic that people are more aware of. But I was very aware of all the stereotypes as well. When I was writing Nesting, I was writing against the weight of all the other stories and films that had gone before—this stereotype of, Why doesn’t she just leave? And particularly the narrative around a woman leaving an abusive relationship and driving off into the sunset, and then everything is okay, which still happens in a lot of books and films. It’s not realistic.
I think stories do carry power. They do carry weight. Because if that same story has been repeated over and over again, then it’s damaging our understanding of what that woman’s life actually looks like.
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