A new novel written by a Dublin priest has received rave reviews in two national newspapers and hit the top ten sellers in major bookstores. ‘Leaving Ardglass’ is the third novel from the hand of Fr William King, who is parish priest of Its Corpus Christi Church in Griffith Avenue
Irish Independent literary editor John Boland praised the Drumcondra cleric’s “eye for the telling detail”, while Irish Times reviewer Derek Hand said Fr King’s book was “a plot-driven novel: well paced and interesting enough to keep the reader's interest and attention”.
Kerry born Fr King said that he graduated in English but only took to creative writing after going back to college to study for an MA in English.
“I was in the course of working on a PhD when it struck him that what he really wanted to do was to write”.
“I have been writing ever since; I write early in the morning, I get about two hours in, not every day but when I’m getting to grips with a book, it has to be every day” he explained.
“It’s done by 9 30, so I go over to the Church, have morning prayers and 10 o’clock Mass”
He said that ‘Leaving Ardglass’ is set to a large extent in the “great wave of emigration to England in the 1950s”.
“It revolves around the fortunes of two brothers, one of whom becomes a priest and a vicar general and has high prospects of becoming a bishop in a fictitious diocese called Oriel”.
“The other brother is called MJ and goes to England and makes a fortune in north London around Kilburn and Cricklewood in the building business”.
The novel describes “all the rough difficult conditions of men climbing into the wagons at half past six to work on the buildings” Fr King continues.
“Eventually the builder brother comes back to Ireland and becomes a developer and the book tells what happens his family”.
He said his book is “a tale of a family and of Irish social history in the last fifty years, including what has happened in the Church in the 80s and 90s and the Celtic Tiger and how people are affected by the lure of it and the greed and covetousness that is inherent in every human being”.
Fr King says a novel is easier to write than a short story or a poem, because a poem “has to be word perfect in rhythm, in music in style”.
“A false note in a novel will go unnoticed, but a false note in a short story will be very obvious”.
Fr King said he has been “very lucky” in his dealings with publishers and has not suffered too much of the discouraging ‘rejection slips’ of which authors complain.
“I have an agent, Jonathan Williams, who knows where to situate a book and will take it around, almost like selling calves at a market”.
“He also advises and in the case of ‘Leaving Ardglass’, I had 60,000 words written and he said it was an absorbing story, but I needed to write another 40,000 words!” he revealed.
“Lilliput Press, which published it, was very interested, a couple of publishers said they liked it but said it was not in their agenda right now”.
Fr King, who was born in Kilflynn, Co. Kerry, in 1945, studied at UCD and Holy Cross College, Clonliffe. His previous novels were The Strangled Impulse, which appeared in 1997 and Swansong, published in 2001.
He said that though the ink is barely dry on his latest novel, he is already giving thought to his next work.
“I’m already thinking along the lines of something very different, but it will be still in the fiction area and maybe about Celtic Tiger Ireland, as nothing much has been written about that”.
Leaving Ardglass by William King is published by Lilliput Press at €12.99.
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