I have the great pleasure today to introduce to you all a writer you may not have heard of, but which I think you’ll definitely want to get to know: Shauna Gilligan. Born and bred in Dublin, Shauna has worked and lived in Mexico, Spain, India and the UK. She lives in County Kildare where she works in Adult Education and teaches novel writing at the National University of Ireland Maynooth. She is currently completing a PhD in Writing at the University of Glamorgan. Her fiction has been published widely and her first novel, Happiness Comes from Nowhere is now published and available. I had the great pleasure of reading a review copy and Shauna valiantly agreed to answer some questions about the book for us today.

Welcome Shauna! First off, what can you tell us about the title? Aha the title. I tell you, titles and covers are so important, I think. This wasn’t an easy one and went through lots of different iterations both prior to publication and then during the publication process. I think this novel was particularly difficult to name because of the layers and themes, the interconnectedness of the characters rather than their linear story. Essentially it boiled down to an emotion that captured both the characters and the action: happiness. And then it needed to reflect both the sense of light and shadow. As the characters – like all of us, really – are searching for something which is not named (or guaranteed!), I felt that the title Happiness Comes from Nowhere was a good fit to both the philosophy and the story.


As you know, I am especially interested in the importance of place.  In your book, Dublin is crucial, but “not-Dublin” (if you know what I mean) is also very important. In some ways, other places, both real and imaginary, help to create the reality of Dublin, almost like negative shadowing. I wonder if you had any thoughts of the role non-Dublin places have in the creation of the Dublin reality. Yes, place is an essential element in your novels, Sue, in fact it’s almost like a character. Dublin is crucial, as you say, to my novel as it’s where the characters become themselves. I like urban spaces because it’s in their very nature to have a shadow side. I always think of the squareness of buildings, their shadows on the streets. When we inhabit those spaces we too become shadows of each other. Dublin and not-Dublin work in that way in Happiness Comes from Nowhere; it’s the bits we don’t talk about, the goings on that we try to hide. I think rather than create a Dublin reality, as you suggest, these underbellies serve to negate that reality. I have Dirk, Mary and Ita leave Dublin and go to Italy and Spain and it’s these journeys that also help create a Dublin reality by showing the characters the other, or as you put it the “not-Dublin”.


You have written in several different voices. Did you worry/find it difficult to do that while keeping it one single work/novel? That’s an interesting one because in theory it should have been difficult. I felt it actually worked well for me writing it because all of these different voices are part of that bigger scheme – they are all on the same (but different) journey and they all interconnect. We see Ita, for example, in her own chapter in “Red Girl” and again with Angela in “The Craic” and then later with Dirk in “Maladies.” I thought of it like looking through a kaleidoscope but not quite turning that dial. It’s glimpses of possibilities, like people we cross on the street but never interact with. The difference is, I had my characters interact. They are all part of the one story.


And lastly, can you do the impossible and summarize the book in one sentence?