The Struggles of War

Redemption Falls is Irish author Joseph O'Connor's just released sequel to his bestselling novel Star of the Sea. Hailed by the critics as a modern masterpiece, it's an epic tale of the American civil war and its aftermath, assembling an unforgettable cast of characters who struggle to survive in a ravaged nation. CAHIR O'DOHERTY asks the author what led to the story, and where the story led him.

JOSEPH O'Connor, the celebrated Irish novelist and brother of the controversial singer Sinead O'Connor, has written a remarkable new book that's sure to cement his growing reputation here.

Set in America's Western frontier in the aftermath of the Civil War, Redemption Falls follows the path of a crestfallen Irish war hero who's consumed with anger and disillusionment. The new book, already hailed by the critics, marks O'Connor's triumphant arrival into the overcrowded field of great Irish writers.

This week O'Connor time from his heavily publicized book launch to talk to the Irish Voice. Asked why he tackled the Civil War in his latest venture he replied, "I was trying to write a much more contemporary book - a thriller set in modern Dublin - but I found myself late at night thinking about a much more historical character, a young woman walking across a devastated landscape. She turned out to be Eliza Mooney, a central character in Redemption Falls. The book began with Eliza Mooney and pretty much everything about it flowed from that."

Like many other Irish writers and filmmakers of the moment, including Neil Jordan and Terry George, O'Connor realized right away that he was writing a book about war and its far reaching consequences.

Says O'Connor, "For some years I had been considering a novel about the American Civil War, as a sequel to Star of the Sea, and I realized pretty quickly that this was it. Once I realized that I just put down my head and went for it."

Although O'Connor is the author of 11 books he finds the whole business of writing very lonely work, and a craft as well as an art. Unlike many other Irish writers of his generation, though, he doesn't believe that writing is all about self-expression.

For O'Connor it's all about learning to tell a story the best way you can. That sounds easy, he claims, but it's actually the hardest thing he knows.

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Nster.com