For many millennials, adult life is starting later and later. This is one of the main subjects of Caragh Maxwell\u2019s engrossing debut novel Sugartown, in which a young woman in her 20s self-destructs after moving back to the family home in the midlands. Written in a candid style full of wry humour and swagger, the book is arrested development in action: mother issues, romantic woes, alcohol and drug binges, life as one big party and a never-ending hangover. <\/p>\n
Though Maxwell is a millennial from Mullingar<\/a>, her own life trajectory has been quite different. Diagnosed with stage IV Hodgkin\u2019s lymphoma at 18<\/a>, she spent the next few years undergoing treatment that ultimately saved her life. At 22 she moved to Sligo<\/a>, where she still lives with her fianc\u00e9 Keith. Now 30, she credits the move with changing the direction of her life, allowing her to escape the identity of \u2018patient\u2019 that she felt branded with in her hometown and to explore, through a literature degree at ATU Sligo and a subsequent MPhil at Trinity, her love of writing. <\/p>\n \u201c[Cancer<\/a>] kind of shattered me,\u201d she says. \u201cI started college and then dropped out, didn\u2019t really know what to do with myself. Moving to Sligo was the best thing I could have done. If I didn\u2019t go, I wouldn\u2019t have done my undergrad, and I wouldn\u2019t have written a book.\u201d The result is a novel full of casually imparted wisdom that was clearly hard-earned. <\/p>\n \u201cWell, the adolescent cancer really sped up the maturity,\u201d she says, laughing. \u201cI didn\u2019t have a lot of time to be resting on my laurels, thinking I was an invincible 20-year-old. It was like, okay, the fun part of life is over. You\u2019re not invincible and death is inevitable. It\u2019s very grim to think about but I came out the other side a bit more weathered than most 21-year-olds.\u201d<\/p>\n Throughout our Zoom interview Maxwell is engaging, funny and thoughtful. Speaking from her rented home in Sligo, she has plenty to say on a range of topics, from the impact of the recession on her generation, to complicated mother-daughter relationships. As part of the book\u2019s publicity campaign she has written essays on these matters, drawing from experience. <\/p>\n The Cork author Caroline O\u2019Donoghue<\/a> recently wrote an excellent piece for The Bookseller criticising the fact that female authors are often asked to bare their souls in personal essays in return for publicity for their work. Did Maxwell find it taxing? <\/p>\n \u201cPersonally I\u2019m kind of lucky in the sense that I don\u2019t mind writing about, you know, things that have traumatised me,\u201d she says with a laugh. \u201cI actually loved doing it. I have a lot of opinions and nowhere to put them. I was a mouthy feminist 16-year-old who started family arguments over women\u2019s rights and the Catholic Church at Christmas dinner, and not much has changed there.\u201d<\/p>\n But on the broader point she agrees with O\u2019Donoghue. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s right that we should be expected to trot out the most horrible things that have ever happened to us in order to sell a book or achieve publicity or acknowledgment. It feels a bit gross. And I just can\u2019t picture any men being asked to do that, like the ones I\u2019m thinking of, I don\u2019t remember seeing a confessional essay published in a national newspaper before their latest novel.\u201d<\/p>\n Ironically, it was a personal essay on her teenage cancer, published in The Irish Times in 2019<\/a>, that first drew her to the attention of agents. In the end, under the guidance of her lecturers at ATU Sligo, Una Mannion<\/a> and Eoin McNamee<\/a>, she went with Peter Straus at RCW. Maxwell\u2019s editor is Juliet Mabey, co-founder of Oneworld, whose authors include three recent Booker Prize winners in Paul Lynch, Paul Beatty and Marlon James. On paper this reads like a dream combination for a debut novelist, but in reality the path to publication wasn\u2019t straightforward. <\/p>\n [\u00a0Sophie White: \u2018Staying playful and goofy is the secret of a happy relationship\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n \u201cI got so many rejections when the manuscript was sent out. And it really knocked me. Because you go into it with such hope for it. But I think it was good for me too, because once I got the wall of initial rejections, I was like, okay, well, I\u2019m completely broken down now, my ego is gone, and we\u2019ll just move on to the next thing. Kind of that crushing realisation of, okay, this book is, for all intents and purposes, dead in the water right now.\u201d<\/p>\n When the offer came in from Oneworld, Maxwell jokes that she would have sold her novel for a fiver. \u201cI would have been like, yes, please, just take it. Somebody take it. But I couldn\u2019t have asked for a better publisher than Juliet. She\u2019s been absolutely brilliant with me and really gets the book and is championing it at every turn.\u201d<\/p>\n While the story of Sugartown is fictional, it is driven by real emotion. \u201cIt lends itself to good storytelling,\u201d she says. \u201cI have a habit of writing bits of myself, over and over, like I\u2019m trying to work out the knots in my psyche by graphing them on paper. I think that \u2018write what you know\u2019 is good advice, in the sense that writing filled with authentic emotion is often the best writing.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the central aspects of the book explores the crippling effects of the recession on small-town Ireland and on the generation who had the misfortune to come of age as things deteriorated. Maxwell witnessed this firsthand in Mullingar. <\/p>\n \u201cI won\u2019t be able to buy a house anytime soon because of the collapse of the Celtic Tiger and the recession,\u201d she says. \u201cMy family lost our house when I was 18 due to foreclosure from the bank. And I\u2019m one of thousands. It feels like we were sold a lie as teenagers and now as adults there\u2019s nothing. <\/p>\n \u201cOver the last 10 years, the heart has been absolutely cut out of my hometown. Like it\u2019s such a simple thing, but when I was still living there, on a Saturday night it would be buzzing, there\u2019d be people everywhere my age. And now you go there on a Saturday and it\u2019s dead because everyone\u2019s either emigrated or [people] have passed away. I know three people who have taken their own lives in my generation.\u201d<\/p>\n I have a habit of writing bits of myself, over and over, like I\u2019m trying to work out the knots in my psyche by graphing them on paper<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Mental health<\/a> supports can help to a point, but they can\u2019t fix the wider economic backdrop or societal issues. \u201cYou can throw all the holistic stuff at it, like you just have to take care of yourself, you should just try antidepressants, go to the gym, for mental health walks and see a counsellor, but the fact of the matter is, it\u2019s systemic issues, like the aftermath of the financial collapse and no adequate housing<\/a>, that are to blame. Having a mental health walk isn\u2019t going to fix that. <\/p>\n \u201cThe underlying issue is still always there. How can you heal that in yourself if it\u2019s a constant problem? If you spend the first 15 years of your life being told, \u2018you will have a house, a car, you will be married, you\u2019ll have kids, a good job\u2019. And then you get to your 30s, and you have maybe one or two of those things and no solid plan to get the rest in line. Of course that\u2019s going to affect your mental health and your outlook on life. If you\u2019re depressed because you can\u2019t afford a house or a stable place to live, the only thing that\u2019s going to fix that is affordable, safe housing. <\/p>\n \u201cI know plenty of people my age actively putting off having children not because they don\u2019t want children, but because they don\u2019t have the money to give the children the life that they deserve. Who wants to bring a child into the world when it\u2019s on fire and you\u2019re renting a black mould apartment in the middle of a city? It\u2019s just not sustainable. It\u2019s not feasible. And I don\u2019t really see an end to it anytime soon.\u201d<\/p>\n Much of Sugartown is concerned with parent-child relations. The protagonist Saoirse\u2019s father is an alcoholic who was largely out of the picture when she was growing up. Her relationship with her mother Maura is intense and fractious, a dark legacy handed down through generations of women in the family. <\/p>\n \u201cI think mothers and daughters can kind of be each other\u2019s absolute worst critics and best friends, and often at the same time,\u201d Maxwell says. \u201cI know that in generations previous to mine women have had hurt imparted by their mothers on to them and that then is put on to us, but I find a lot of women in my generation have gone, okay, no, I don\u2019t want this inherited inner critical voice of mine to be passed on to my child. So we\u2019re doing the inner work to heal from that. To process it differently.\u201d<\/p>\n\n