Last December the best-selling novelist, Patricia Scanlan, was diagnosed with breast cancer. "It was a shock," she says but on the eve of publication of the much-anticipated City Girls Forever, she is buoyed with optimism and bubbling with plans. Donal O'Donoghue talks to her.
There’s something I need to ask Patricia Scanlan. It relates to a scene from her new novel, the much-anticipated sequel City Girls Forever, when Caroline seeks out the vibratory pleasures of her Rampant Rabbit. Having lived a sheltered life, the name was utterly new to me. Had Patricia, a best-selling novelist who has written of love, lust and the rest, coined it from the bank of her imagination? Did she, in fact, know a Rampant Rabbit? My queries are met with a hearty chuckle.
"Oh god!" she says. "Thanks for the laugh, Donal and I need a good laugh these days. In life you either sink or get on with it." And following her diagnosis with breast cancer in December, she is getting on with it, with black humour. "It was Friday the 13th", she says with a wry smile, but the prognosis, like the woman herself, is positive.
I first met Patricia Scanlan a few years back at her home in north Dublin. It was springtime – or maybe it just felt that way in her company. The deal was to chat about her beloved garden but just in case there were any tricky horticultural questions, her professional gardener was on standby. He was never called into action. Yet I knew of Patricia long before that, back when we both worked in Dublin Libraries and her star was in the ascension with her debut publication, City Girl, in 1990.
"It’s just bad timing," she says now of her cancer, with PR duties pending and over 1,600 books to be signed days after we spoke. As ever, it’s her readers who are her number one (City Girls Forever is dedicated to them) and as ever she’s getting on with it, even if that news on 13 December knocked her back.
"It was a bit of a shock because even though my family history isn’t great you still don’t think you’re going to get it," she says. "It was a routine check-up. I had a shoulder replacement in February last year and had to cancel my BreastCheck appointment that month as I was unable to put my arm behind my back for the x-rays. So, I went in November, got the results in December and once I was in the system it all happened quite quickly with surgery in January followed by another surgical procedure in early March.
"The consultant is just being extra careful and the people at BreastCheck are wonderful, so caring and so kind and so thorough. I now must undergo radiotherapy but as it was detected in the early stages the prognosis is positive. It’s the waiting for the results that is the worst bit."
Patricia’s 'tribe’ – family and close friends – have kept her buoyant with their support and good humour. Her mobile home in Wicklow has always been a refuge, now more than ever, measuring out the good times with her tribe. "Down there we sit out at night-time, wrapped in throws and gazing at the stars, imagining our past lives as native American women," she says and laughs again.
Her spiritual faith too has been a help. "It’s not a religious faith but really about seeing the good in people," she says. "When I sign my books, I put a little blessing in there for my loyal readers. I recently got a letter from the friend of a young woman who died with cancer. In her end-care at a hospice she wanted me to know how much my books had got her through the tough times. How humbling is that?"
In the acknowledgements to City Girls Forever, Scanlan thanks Ciara Geraghty and Caroline Grace-Cassidy whose podcast inspired her to write the sequel. "After 30 years they made me see City Girl in a whole new light." In what way? "I’d forgotten how dark the original book was," she says now.
"I’d forgotten how dark Caroline’s life was in a ‘lavender’ marriage and how gay people were treated, which was horrendous. I’d forgotten the patriarchy and the way women were expected to put up with bad behaviour, expected to be at home looking after children as in Maggie’s case. So, when I heard Ciara and Caroline talking about it, it reignited my interest and I wondered ‘what are my ladies doing now?’ Once I sat down to write I found there was so much material that I could have completed two books."
Indeed. A lot has happened in the lives of best pals Devlin, Caroline, and Maggie in the years since we last met them and there are also umpteen topical issues interrogated in City Girls Forever including elder abuse, sexual abuse, bulimia, wokeness, infidelity, endometriosis, the menopause, bad men, bad women, the loss of a child and so on.
"The elder abuse I found interesting because now I’m of an age to see it," says Scanlan. "When I worked in the libraries, I used to visit elderly people living in the flats and they would say how they’d see only myself and the warden from one week to the next and then, on pension day, their kids would stop by and take what they wanted. I’ve never forgotten that."
The book also has the line that ‘the patriarchy is alive and kicking’. Does Patricia Scanlan believe that is so? "Certainly, in Trump’s America patriarchy is very much alive and kicking," she says. "And in many ways things have got bad for women again and you’re wondering ‘how has this happened?’
"In my own case, after I had been diagnosed with endometriosis, I asked the GP for a hysterectomy. I was in my 50s then, but he wasn’t interested, saying you’ve only a few years to go. It was all about what he wanted and nothing to do with what I wanted or needed for my own body. That day he whooshed me out the door I felt like I was 19 again, when I was told the pain and exhaustion that I was experiencing was all in my head or that I had a low pain threshold."
The big villain in City Girls Forever is Colin Cantrell-King, father of Devlin’s child and serial abuser of vulnerable young women. Has Patricia known such men? "Ah," she says and considers. "Yes, I have. Is there any woman who hasn’t been groped? I remember men would come up and touch you believing that they can just do that with impunity. You’re in such shock that you become immobile, thinking ‘did that just happen?’ If that happened now, they would they get a clatter."
In the book, revenge is served up cold by Devlin and other women who turn the table on Cantrell-King. "I didn’t know that was going to happen," says Scanlan. "And that’s what I love about writing, I surprise myself as I’ve no idea what’s going to happen half the time."
City Girls Forever is also punctuated with pointed jabs at those who think that writers of "soppy romance novels" just churn them out. "Popular fiction writers get that a lot," she says. "But the media have been mostly good to me. However, I do remember two journalists. One asked me if I was sad that I never got to have had children. I said, ‘yes, I’d always wanted children, but it wasn’t meant to be, and I was blessed with fabulous nephews and nieces.’
"The headline the following day was: ‘Read All About Patricia Scanlan’s Silent Agony.’ And one of my very first interviews was with a journalist who had a bit of a name. It seemed to go well. Then came the piece which included the line ‘[Scanlan] writes in a style easily accessible to the mentally handicapped.’ But as I say most others have been decent and kind."
There is a decency in Patricia Scanlan – it’s there in her books too. "I light a candle every time I write and ask for the words I’m meant to write," she says. When we spoke, she had two candles lighting – one for her brother who has having a medical procedure later that day and herself and another friend who was having a tough time.
"I’ve boosted the profits of candle-making companies," she says and laughs. "The only thing is not to burn the house down." She also continues as an editor and champion of the Open Door adult literacy books and while none other 20-plus novels have yet been adopted for the screen, hope springs eternal. "It hasn’t happened yet but I’m ever the optimist," she says. "I want to sashay down that red carpet one day!"
For now, though, Patricia Scanlan will be taking it easy for a bit. Although in the same breath she says that she’s thinking about penning her first historical fiction, inspired by Celtic myths and the goddess, Macha. "There’s a fantastic story there so it could be my next project," she says. "You read it here first." Otherwise, between the radiotherapy sessions, she is anticipating time in her beloved garden.
"It is my go-to when I’m down in the dumps," she says. "Everything is bursting into bloom now. The crocuses, the daffodils and I have this Daphne which has the most glorious scent. When that blooms, I know that spring is coming, and we’ll be heading back down to Wicklow again soon. It’s such a gift in the dark depths of winter and it has me thinking of brighter days ahead."
City Girls Forever by Patricia Scanlan is published by Simon and Schuster.
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