More Phwooar To Her Elbow
A frequently steamy tale of college shenanigans, Emily Gillmor Murphy’s debut novel You & I is a proper thrill-ride. But, she insists, her own student days weren’t nearly as outrageous.
Olaf Tyaransen, 23 Aug 2012
“I always enjoyed writing when I was growing up,” says young Wicklow-born novelist Emily Gillmor Murphy. “I was always writing little short stories and stuff, but I never thought I could be a writer because I was actually quite dyslexic as a child. When I finished school my mum encouraged me to get in contact with someone to see if I had any skill at it at all, so I got in touch with [agent] Marianne Gunn O’Connor. She told me I had potential – and to get back in contact again if I ever had a novel.”
The aspiring author didn’t waste her time. Having landed in UCD to study Arts in 2009, she soon set to work on her debut novel. “The first year in college and the summer after, I wrote the first manuscript of You & I. Arts was a great course for me. I had a laptop with me all the time, so whenever I had a couple of hours off, which you do a lot when you’re doing an Arts degree, I just sat down somewhere and wrote away. It was great. So when I finished, I sent it to Marianne and she loved it. So it took off from there.”
Took off is putting it mildly.
“I’ve a two book deal, with Transworld Ireland,” Emily explains, “and also a German publisher and a Russian publisher as well. The second book I’m working away on at the moment. I’ve a few more chapters to write before the first draft is done, and then I’ll send it off to the publishers and hopefully they’ll like it.”
Told from various first-person points of views, You & I follows the misadventures of a group of young students as they attempt to deal with what college life – and indeed life in general – throws at them. However, she insists it’s not a roman a clef.
“The whole book is obviously fictional, but I definitely was inspired by my contemporaries in UCD. I wanted to make it a really realistic book of life in UCD – so while it’s loosely based on real life, the events and the characters are all fictional.”
So none of your fellow students are going to recognise themselves in it?
Olaf Tyaransen
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