Cecelia shimmers

Cecelia Ahern shows she is still a good journalist even though she left that career behind, (as well as potential Eurovision representation for Ireland – but that’s an interesting piece of trivia we will digress to later), since becoming a bestselling author. When I phoned her Cecelia tells me she has been reading the papers, no doubt in preparation for her week long promotional visit to Australia and more specifically her visit to Tasmania this Saturday. Cecelia is able to chat to me like a local about the upcoming royal visit and the talk of whether the royal couple will bring their (older) children along.

The world of fairy tales is one Cecelia is familiar with, maybe not princesses’ type fairy tales because her characters are very much ordinary people going about their everyday lives but within that everyday reality Cecelia imbues her stories with an element of the fantastical. Real lives co-exist with characters that have more than a hint of the supernatural. Cecelia believes it is these tales of ordinary people which has won her a devoted following.

As Cecelia explains, the fantastical has always been part of her writing and mind set. She has been daydreaming for a long time and doesn’t envisage that will change. Although she has tried to write without that element of fantasy, somehow it has managed to assert itself. One of the things Cecelia would really love to do is write a whodunit as crime fiction is her favourite genre and with her imagination it would seem this would be an easy step for her to take.

Cecelia doesn’t believe her training in journalism necessarily is advantageous or has hampered her as a novelist and although she has taken some creative writing classes she doesn’t believe in writing by numbers, that writing can’t be taught to a formula. The ingredient that makes a writer, like many things in life, is passion and that is one word the disillusioned protagonist of Cecelia’s new novel ‘Time of my life’ doesn’t like as she herself has lost that passion for life.

In this novel the protagonist Lucy, who is not feeling passion for anything anymore, is summoned for a meeting with her life to attempt to address past misdemeanours such as lying about being able to speak Spanish, a requirement of her present job of manual translator.

‘Life’ is personified in the form of a man who helps Lucy regain her passion for life.

Cecelia explains why Lucy’s ‘life’ is personified in masculine form. It is for the balance it creates, the idea of yin and yang the male and female and the need for both to co-exist to keep a healthy balance. it may be a difficult concept to wrap one’s mind around but similarly in the tradition of everyone having a guardian angel it is said that the angel is always of the opposite sex to the person it is assigned to guard.

Cecelia is a prolific writer with almost a book a year for the last seven years. Her routine is to start writing in January and have a book completed in six months. Cecelia writes her books by longhand and then translates them to type. Brimming with ideas Cecelia plans to begin her next book true to form in January. At the moment she is on the publicity trail and Australia has a coup in being the first country to see this latest novel in print.

Oh and that interesting piece of trivia. Cecelia was once part of an all-girl group called Shimmer that unsuccessfully tried out to represent Ireland in Eurovision. Nowadays, Cecelia harbours no desire to return to a singing career but is happy to reserve her musical expression just at home.

You can enjoy afternoon tea with Cecelia and hear her talk about her new book, and writing in general, at an event presented by Dymocks bookshop at Hadley’s hotel at 2pm this Saturday the 24th September, tickets are available now from Dymocks Hobart. Also available now to coincide with the event is Cecelia’s latest book ‘The Time of my Life’.
Paula Xiberras