I’ve lived in Dublin for many years, an innocent abroad, a fish out of water. It’s my home, but it’s never been home home. Like for every immigrant, home home is a mixture of fantasy, history and old geography. A shining memory of childhood hard to discern through the lens of reality, no matter where you’re standing. The country you live in is never really your own. And the country you came from doesn’t stay the same without you. Writing a novel set in Dublin, I couldn’t pull up the home home of a native—I had to write from the perspective of a new arrival. A re-incarnation of the rube I was so long ago.
I remember the first time I came into Dublin city centre almost exactly thirty years ago. I was staying with a host family in south Dublin, in a suburb I later learned was ridiculously posh. It didn’t look fancy to me at the time, but I’d kill for the property now. On the way into the city, we passed through Ballsbridge, where the U.S. Embassy still stands out like a space fortress, a huge gold eagle stretched above the door. The Dad of the family, I can’t remember his name, gestured at the crosswalk and made some kind of crack about Jack and Jill heading into work. The daughter next to him, whose name and short skirt I stole for my novel, said something about how you could always spot an American. “How?” I wanted to ask, but didn’t. A few days later I was talking about this with another American and we cornered a guy who was waiting for the same professor we were (who never turned up, by the way). “Can you spot an American?” we asked. When he said he could we quizzed him and finally he claimed it was my friend’s bag. Which he’d bought in Dublin.
When my host family dropped me off at Trinity to try to find accommodation, I could not get over how gorgeous everyone in Dublin was. I remember thinking I would spend the year abroad alone, a wallflower among roses. Irish people are seldom ranked high on the international physical attractiveness lists (number two in sexy accents, though), but I was hooked from the start. I remember a drunken Frenchman (his father was big in cous cous, his friend told me, earnestly, hopefully) who tried to explain to me, an American, what was special about Irish women. “Thin,” he said, “but with big bits. Big bits, yes?” The accompanying hand signals left no room for misunderstanding, but I didn’t correct his vocabulary. I wasn’t in the big bits business, if you know what I mean.
That first year in Dublin, Irish people would ask me, “Why are you here?” They understood the power of tourism, the green dollar, but not why anyone would choose to live in Dublin, with its dirty streets and old dreams. My one room flat was on the same street Leopold Bloom lived on, and nobody cared. Everyone my age had U.S. visas on the brain and siblings who couldn’t come home ‘from America’ because they didn’t have the paperwork to get back. The idea of someone choosing Dublin over New York, Boston or Chicago was ludicrous to them.
By the time I’d fallen in love with an Irishman and settled on Dublin as my home a few years later, the Celtic Tiger was stretching its long legs across the country.By the time I’d fallen in love with an Irishman and settled on Dublin as my home a few years later, the Celtic Tiger was stretching its long legs across the country. House prices started to skyrocket, and every conversation was about property: Who had gotten a foot on the ladder? Why was it so hard to get a decent builder? We grabbed a house like it was the last bit of floating timber in the wake of the Titanic, missing the fact that there was a guy with five buses and a 24 hour transit business living next door. Dublin was flooded with new money and wore it like a mink coat that needed tailoring. Then came the financial crash, and the International Monetary Fund bailout, and the ghost housing estates, and the public sector pay cuts. Irish people seemed to do a long, slow exhale. Sure, it was a disaster, but it was familiar. Nobody had to pretend to be fancy anymore, and everyone started talking about visas again.
While I raised my kids, Ireland raised itself. Again. Slowly, slowly, economic recovery and direct foreign investment repaved the streets and finished the houses. Multinational companies tipped their caps to low corporate tax and the Irish exchequer welcomed them in. Every scrap of waste land in the unposh place I live is being zoned for high density housing, and recently I overheard my adult son say he’d never be able to afford a home here. Plus a change.
And this is the Ireland my young American protagonist enters. Nobody asks him why he’s here, or doubts his desire to stay in Dublin. In Ireland. Who wouldn’t want to stay? I had to put on his shoes and walk the streets I’ve been missing since responsible adulthood and persistent motherhood took over. With the exception of one sad loss to Covid, the list of pubs he drinks in are the pubs I loved. Where I drank, and talked about books, and flirted with stupid Frenchmen and smart Irishmen. And it was so, so good to be back. The upholstery a little nicer, the mirrors behind the bars a little shinier, and the bathrooms much improved. Like me, a good few years older, but dressing with a bit more care. And in case you’re wondering, while Irish people remain gorgeous, the experience of a confident and multicultural Dublin is even more beautiful.
I’m not pretending to be the only American writing in Ireland. There are, as the Irish would say, ‘a rake’ of them. From the historic J.P Dunleavy to the poetic Alice Lyons, Americans have been ‘coming home’ to Ireland or making their home in Ireland since the founding of the state. Writing about Ireland. Writing about the Irish experience. Writing about the complexity of the Irish character. And I read them and feel yes, yes, that’s familiar. I know these characters.
My fast first draft happened in 2019, with my poor main character tripping around Dublin aimlessly. The much slower second draft emerged in 2021, and he had the bit between his teeth. And in my ‘rest’ period (as the actors say), searching for an agent, longing for a publisher, I started reading again. I don’t know how I got my hands on it, but somehow the peerless Tana French’s The Searcher landed in my hands. And there it finally was, an American flailing around Irish culture. Being an American. Making all the mistakes. Sticking out like a sore thumb. All done with the mastery of a great storyteller by a woman who knows what it is like to be American-Irish rather than Irish-American. And it felt more than familiar. It felt like home home.
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