AN English author who penned her debut novel in the Burtonport home left by her late grandfather has won a major literary prize.
Jessica Andrews lifted the £10,000 Portico Prize for ‘Saltwater’, a story of a girl from Sunderland who feels like an outsider when she goes to university in London. The Portico Prize is awarded to the book deemed to “best evoke the spirit of the north of England”.
Donegal has long been a magnet for writers, thanks largely to its rurality and its landscape. But in Jessica’s case she chose it as much for practical reasons as inspirational. Prior to starting her book she was working in bars and cafes to make ends meet. Skint and struggling to pay her rent, she decided to trade London for rural Donegal and the house owned by her late grandfather Neil Doogan.
“My granddad Neil died a few years ago and he left a house in Burtonport. I had no money, no proper job and I knew I wouldn’t have to pay rent so I decided to move to Donegal,” said the author.
The move was not purely a money saving device though. Jessica spent many of her summers in Burtonport and Dungloe and had a good grasp on the area and the people. She was also aware that the tranquility would provide her with the time and space to write her first book.
“We would have spent every summer in Donegal so I knew lots of people there. It was a second home in many ways when I was growing up.
“When I went back I spent about eight months there. It’s quite isolated and I can’t drive so I cycled a lot. It was funny though because in many ways I felt more lonely in a big city like London than I did in Donegal. I never felt lonely there and it gave me the space to think about things.”
Saltwater is made up of 300 brief chapters that the 27-year-old author deliberately jumbled up by printing out a manuscript and rearranging it on her neighbour’s kitchen floor.
It follows the main character, Lucy, as she goes to London for university but finds herself adrift when she is away from home before going to take stock of her life at her grandfather’s house in Donegal.
It is, in many ways, an autobiography.
“When I moved to Donegal I did so for practical reasons in that I needed somewhere to live. But suddenly I had a house to myself and these huge beaches, the space and the sky and it is all in the book a lot.
“Also one of the big themes of the book is looking at family history and lineage and when I was in Donegal I didn’t really realise that is what I was doing. But when I was there I got a sense of figuring out my identity by reconnecting with family members and with people who knew my granddad really well. It happened by accident but I started to wonder if this is what it was about all along.”
The now award winning Jessica Andrews has returned to Burtonport on a couple of occasions since completing Saltwater. She is currently living in Spain and working on her second novel but is not ruling out a permanent move to the Donegal coast somewhere down the line.
The writer added, “I would move but in the immediate future I can’t because I have quite a lot to do. But I have thought about moving to Ireland permanently and it may happen in the future.”
For more on Jessica Andrews and her work, check out www.jessica-andrews.com
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