The protagonist of your story “Five Bridges” is an Irishman in his forties, who came to the U.S. and overstayed a tourist visa decades ago. Now, at risk of deportation, he decides to move back to Ireland. Most reporting about the current Presidency and ICE’s deportations has focussed on undocumented Latin Americans living in the U.S. What made you want to tell the story from a different perspective?
It has been on my mind for a long time. As a reporter, I researched the situation of Irish people who came to the United States in the nineteen-eighties with tourist or student visas that they overstayed. Some of them became legal and some not. Many of the undocumented Irish immigrants paid taxes and settled down. The only problem for them, really, was that if they went home, even for a short visit, then they could not return. It struck me as a dramatic story. I lived in San Francisco in the first decade of the twenty-first century, so I got to know this world.
Paul’s decision is complicated by the fact that he has a young daughter in San Francisco, with whom he has begun to build a real relationship. He was estranged from her mother, Sandra, before she was born, and there is residual hostility on Sandra’s part that isn’t fully explained. What made you choose to leave the source of the bitterness somewhat undefined?
One of the plus sides of writing a story, rather than a novel, is that you can leave out large areas of the emotional history of the characters and large tracts of backstory and focus on a moment that is the “now” of the story. You can include much by implication. In the case of Paul and Sandra, there is no secret. He was not dependable, and she grew tired of that. It seems that she has no interest in him. There is nothing much more to be said than what is in the story.
Paul clearly didn’t plan on being a father, but once he decides to face it, he becomes attached. Do you think his connection with Geraldine changes him?
Yes. He doesn’t quite understand how, and that makes it more interesting. In a way, this is his inner life.
The story is told in the third person but adheres very closely to Paul’s perspective. Can you imagine a version that is told from Geraldine’s or Sandra’s point of view?
For Sandra, going on a hike with Geraldine and Paul is no big deal. It is not a defining moment for her. Therefore, if I move to her perspective, I lose a narrative energy and write a story about nothing much. For Paul, this Saturday is a day he will never forget. Nothing much happens, but that makes the day even more significant for him. In the future, when I can imagine an older Geraldine, I may look at writing another version of the story, told from her side.
The story ends before Paul arrives back in Ireland. How do you envision the future for him? Or don’t you?
No, I don’t think beyond the story for him. Or not yet.
You’ve written a lot about historical immigration from Ireland to the U.S. Have you written elsewhere about that situation in our current time?
There are two stories in my book “The Empty Family” that deal with the drama of returning from the U.S.—the title story and “Two Women.” One is set in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the other in the nineteen-nineties. “Five Bridges” is different. Some of it was actually written on the very day it ostensibly takes place—January 18, 2025—and I continued working hard for the rest of that weekend, including the day that Paul finally packed, January 19th. My aim was to finish the story, or be close to a final draft, on the very day that he left America. I did that.
That’s fascinating. Have you written a story in that kind of “real time”—as the actions of the story were taking place in a parallel fictional world—before? What made you want to do that now?
I have a story called “A Long Winter,” which is set in the Catalan Pyrenees in the winter after a heavy snowfall. I wrote the story in the very place where it’s set and in the same kind of weather. Every day, if anything happened, especially something small, I put it in the story. For example, a door in the yard banged in the night and I had to get up to close it. Even as I was doing that, I knew I would put it in the story. It gave me a sense of urgency, of alchemy, of this being not just something imagined but something lived, something close to how things are. It gave me, as I worked, an added impulse, a funny energy. ♦
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