"The Passions of Sophie Bryant - A Short Story by Shauna Gilligan, author of Happiness Comes from Nowhere (2017)

You can read this story here

Irish Times Article on Sophie Bryant, August, 2016

Shauna Gilligan on The Reading Life, includes a link to her Q and A session

I have been reading Shauna Gilligan since March 31, 2012.  I have posted upon several of her wonderful short stories (my posts contain links to the stories) and her highly 

regarded debut novel, Happiness Comes From Nowhere.  Additionally she very kindly contributed an illuminating overview on the work of Desmond Hogan.  In her Q and A session on The Reading Life we dealt with a broad range of matters, many, but not all, Irish literature related.  In all there are eight posts devoted to or by Shauna Gilligan on the blog.  Obviously I would not follow a writer for so long and so closely if I did not hold them in quite high regard.

The just recently published short story "The Passion of Sophie Bryant" is a very intriguing work.  In just a few beautiful pages Gilligan brings to live for us the famous Irish mathematician, educator and a feminist, Sophie Bryant.  (I suggest nonIrish readers take a look at the article from the Irish Times linked to above to expand your understanding of her importance in Irish history.  My guess is most Irish readers will be aware of her importance but others, including myself, will have no prior knowledge about her. I believe Gilligan is assuming some knowledge.  

Sophie Bryant was born in Dublin in 1850, her father was a Trinity Fellow and a famous mathematician.  Bryant was educated at home, learning to speak French and German from governesses.  She moved to London at age 13 when her father was offered a position as Chairman of the Geometry Department of the University of London.  At sixteen she started college, focusing on science.  At nineteen she married a well known mathematician, ten years her senior, he died a year later.  She never remarried.  She continued her education, herself becoming a highly regarded mathematician and head mistress at the North London College school as well as a leading advocate of more legal rights for women, including the right to vote.  She loved outdoor activities and died while hiking in France while on holiday.  

Gilligan does a wonderful job in just a few page taking us into the interior life of Bryant, from her childhood, her brief marriage and her death.  On first scrutiny Bryant will seem the epitome of rationality, dedicated to geometry and science and moral philosophy.  I find I'm really liking the episodic narrative method. Gilligan skillfully takes us below that, to a seer with a vision for a unified view of science and morality.  She was raised in a culture that largely suppressed passion in women, Bryant may not have understood how to deal with this aspect of her life and Gilligan helps us feel her pain and loneliness.  

I really liked this story, I read it five times.

I look forward to following Shauna Gilligan's work for many years 

Shauna Gilligan lives in Kildare with her family and a black and white cat called Lucky. She writes short and long stories and is interested in the depiction of historical events in fiction, and creative processes. She is currently working on her second novel set in Mexico.

Mel u

Sybil’s Dress - A Short Story by Shauna Gilligan - April 1, 2019

A Sybil Connolly Gown

Gateway to Shauna Gilligan on The Reading Life - includes a fascinating Q and A Session

A Girl’s Writing is Never Done - The Website of Shauna Gilligan - A Wonderfully Done Literary Resource

A Gallery of Sybil Connolly Creations - From the Hunt Museum

“Sybil’s Dress” - A Short Story by Shauna Gilligan - April 1, 2019, published in The Cabinet of Heed- A Literary Journal

I have been closely following the work of Shauna Gilligan, author of Happiness Comes from Nowhere, for seven years.  I have posted upon nine of her Short Stories and her powerful debut novel, Happiness Comes from Nowhere. She has very kindly contributed four guests posts on Irish writers to The Reading Life and participated in two illuminating Q and A sessions.  My attention and time is direct result of the great admiration I have for her  talent and her deep literary culture.  Her stories are universal, arising from depths of Irish culture.

I was very happy to find a new Gilligan story online a few days ago, “Sybil’s Dress”.  After reading it twice, I felt I was missing something.  In a minute or so on Google I learned who Sybil was.  Sybil Connolly (1921 to 1998) was a highly regarded Irish fashion designer famous for using Irish textiles and Irish Seamstresses to create world class haute couture.  In the fashion world she was sometimes called “The Irish” Christian Dior. Life Magazine did a Cover Story on her work, The Irish Invade The Fashion World, in 1971.  It was a great source of pride to the Irish when Jackie Kennedy wore one of her designs in her official White House portrait.

Vogue, the world’s leading fashion magazine, had a short article on her in 2015.

I think you really need to know why Sybil Connolly was so important to the Irish so I will share with you their article.

“Sybil Connolly, a favorite of Jacqueline Kennedy, who Vogue once described as “the vitamin C of the Erin-go-Couture movement,” was the first to put Irish design on the map when she showed her designs on a summer’s eve in 1953 at Dunsany Castle.

In 1956, Connelly developed her signature look: horizontal, hand-pleated, taffeta-backed handkerchief linen. So fine were these pleats that it took nine yards of fabric to create just one of the pleated material. Connolly was a romantic designer with a mission to incorporate native materials, like Carrickmacross lace and Donegal tweeds, into a feminine silhouette. Kennedy also deemed them suitable for the White House, selecting one of Connolly’s linen outfits for her 1970 official portrait by Aaron Shikler. More lasting than Connelly’s designs, though, lovely as they are, is her legacy, one that has enabled the careers of such breakout Irish runway stars as Simone Rocha and J.W.Anderson.” From Vogue Magazine 

(There are 216 images of her work on Pinterest — https://www.pinterest.ph/zedna/sybil-connolly/) 

I read The story, Reading time under five minutes, three more times after my research.  I saw just how much Gilligan is able to show us about relationship of the rich and famous fashion designer to the Irish seamstresses who made her gowns.  Connolly could easily afford to have her designs produced by elite fashion houses in Paris or London but she struck with the Irish.  We see in the story how much this meant to the women making her gowns.  Connolly did not send an aid to the workers with her designs, she went there, she talked to the women who admired her so much.  All the seamstresses wished Jackie Kennedy would wear a gown they made.

The story is narrated by one of the workers:

“Real freedom is discipline,” she said as she slipped another pin into the linen.

I stared at my hands as they pleated another line in the evening dress. She was always saying things like that to us. I don’t mean to imply that she talked much, or that she was the chatty sort – she was, after all, a serious woman – but there was a gaiety about her when she paid us a visit. Somehow she felt that these visits must always involve imparting nuggets of knowledge that she had gleaned on her travels.

It was said in the newspapers and whispered amongst us that she was the best travelled and most international Irishwoman in the world. There was a strong hope that the First Lady Jackie Kennedy would wear one of the dresses our hands had pleated – and perhaps even pose for a portrait!”

“Sybil’s Dress” is a marvelous story.  It takes us into the relationship of a famous designer to her workers.  I could not help but contrast this with the despicable way Coco Chanel treated her employees.  

Below is a very good article from the Irish Women’s Museum web page  giving details on the life and career of Ireland’s greatest fashion designer.  I learned she designed uniforms for three divisions of nuns and ran a very successful shop in Dublin for forty years.

https://www.womensmuseumofireland.ie/articles/sybil-connolly

A wonderful full color video from 1957 spotlighting her designs 

https://youtu.be/A0iLQDkn7wg

From the author’s web page

Shauna Gilligan is a novelist and short story writer from Dublin, Ireland.  She has lived and worked in Mexico, Spain, and the UK, and now lives in County Kildare with her family and a black and white cat called Lucky.

She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of South Wales, is a registered teacher with the Teaching Council of Ireland, an active member of the Arts Council of Ireland Writers-in-Prisons Panel and a Professional Mentor with Irish Writers’ Centre. Shauna facilitates creative writing workshops with people of all ages. She teaches students in universities, in the community, and in prison settings.

Shauna enjoys collaborating with visual artists and is particularly interested in exploring the crossover of art and literature in storytelling, the depiction of historical events in fiction, and creative processes.

Her debut novel Happiness Comes from Nowhere was a critical success and the Sunday Independent review declared it to be a “thoroughly enjoyable and refreshingly challenging debut novel.” 

I look forward to following her work for many years.

Mel u

Probably the Irish and those more into fashion history than I would

“Thirty-Five-A-Night” - A Short Story by Shauna Gilligan, 2018

Shauna Gilligan’s Website

Shauna Gilligan on The Reading Life

My Post on Happiness Comes from Nowhere, Shauna Gilligan’s highly lauded debut novel

It was during Irish Short Story Month III in March of 2012 that I first read a Short Story by Shauna Gilligan.  Since then I have posted on several of her Short Stories and her wonderful debut novel Happiness Comes from Nowhere.  She has been kind enough to contribute three guest posts on Irish writers to The Reading Life.  She also participated in two question and answer sessions. Her website is very valuable to all interested in Irish literature and beyond.  

Knowing I wanted to once again feature her work during ISSM VIII she kindly gave me access to a very interesting  just published story “Thirty-Five-A-Night”, told from the point of view of a woman involved in a long term affair, neither party is married.  They mostly see each other on weekends.

Gilligan does an elegant and very intuitive introduction to the story in which we come to understand the relationship.

“We have our routine, John and I. Every Saturday night we follow winding roads to an old hotel or a long-standing bed-and-breakfast in the countryside where we watch, in streak-free mirrors, the scenes we create on king-sized beds. In Dingle I am Madonna; in Cork I become Marianne Faithful; in Galway I have the allure of Eva Braun. John dons one of his moustaches and heeled boots; a signet ring and a medallion; a tasselled studded jacket. For those few hours we are anywhere and anyone but civil servants who live in old houses with aging parents. But this weekend we’re not in the country; for €35 a night we can stay in Dublin and that’s what John’s decided. And so we cruise through the Phoenix Park in John’s shiny Volvo, see a couple jogging in matching tracksuits, pass pretty white benches. There are people curled up on them, already sleeping. I think of what Maeve, my work pal said to me earlier: if I could describe John in one word, then I’d know. I sorted through heaps of payroll claims before I landed on a word. Considerate. Maeve chewed on the lid of her pen. “You mean in that he considers what you like, that sort of thing?” “Yeah.” “Sounds like the marrying type.” More than being a wife, I want to feel what it is to be the woman for whom a man would give up his life. We cruise out through the ornate gates of the Park and a flutter of excitement runs through me. I feel the throb and pinch of new patent heels on my feet, think of the new lacy pants from Marks in my bag.”

From the references to Madonna, Marianne Faithful and Eva Braun we can form a guess as to their ages, and maybe we can see how John relates to her sexually and perhaps what fantasies he projects on her.  I wondered how she sees the relationship.  Tonight John is taking her to a more expensive place than normal, 35 Euros a night.  As I follow them into the hotel we gather it is mostly a place for couples looking for privacy for a romantic liaison.  

As they register the woman is made to feel that the much younger woman receptionist is almost laughing at her.  I have observed people tend to all their lives stay most interested in singers they first encountered in their late teens or twenties.  To elaborate Marianne Faithful became famous in Ireland and The UK, less so in America,in the 1960s.  Her songs were often very sexual.  Given this we can project an age of at least fifty for the couple.  Maybe John likes to imagine he is sleeping with one of these singers.  The Eva Braun reference would take more explication.  Eva's relationship hardly ended well. The narrator somehow is made to feel uncomfortable by the very muted response of the receptionist.  Maybe she is projecting her feelings that she should be settled at her age, not going for sex weekends dressing up to please a man.  I wonder why John needs this. 

The fascinating  ending of the story took me deeper into the mind of the narrator.  I loved the ending but for sure did not see it coming.  I think this would be a very good story for classroom discussion as to the methods Gilligan uses in just a few pages to go so deep.

Shauna Gilligan is a novelist and short story writer from Dublin, Ireland.  She has lived and worked in Mexico, Spain, and the UK, and now lives in County Kildare with her family and a black and white cat called Lucky.

She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of South Wales, is a registered teacher with the Teaching Council of Ireland, an active member of the Arts Council of Ireland Writers-in-Prisons Panel and a Professional Mentor with Irish Writers’ Centre. Shauna facilitates creative writing workshops with people of all ages. She teaches students in universities, in the community, and in prison settings.

Shauna enjoys collaborating with visual artists and is particularly interested in exploring the crossover of art and literature in storytelling, the depiction of historical events in fiction, and creative processes.

Her debut novel Happiness Comes from Nowhere was a critical success and the Sunday Independent review declared it to be a “thoroughly enjoyable and refreshingly challenging debut novel.” 

Shauna is represented by Charlotte Seymour at Andrew Nurnberg Associates International Literary Agency.  From the author’s website.

I hope to follow the work of Shauna Gilligan for a long time.  Be sure to read her two Q And A sessions and her contributed essays.  Writers like Gilligan mean Irish Short Story writers have a future as great as the past 

Mel u

"Yellow Leaning to Gold" by Shauna Gilligan (2015). - A Short Story by the Author of Happiness Comes from Nowhere

My Q and A Session with Shauna Gilligan (includes links to more posts by and about her)

I first became acquainted with the work of Shauna Gilligan during Irish Short Story Month in March, 2012 and I have been following her work ever since then.  I loved her highly regarded debut novel Happiness Comes From Nowhere,  she kindly did a guest post on Desmond Hogan and I have posted on several of her wonderful short stories.

I was happy to see Gilligan has a short story in a just starting literary journal The Lonely Crowd:  The New Home of the Short Story.  (There is a link at the close of my post).     My main purpose here is to let my readers know of the opportunity to read "Yellow Leaning to Gold" and to journalise my continued reading of Gilligan.

The brief story centers on five years passing in the marriage of a prototypically ordinary married couple.  As the story opens the man has just proposed marriage and tried to be  proud when his wife told him she was changing her name to his, "Brennan".  You can see Gilligan's elegant charged prose in these opening lines:

"It was a name which was neither specific nor personal. Brennan could have belonged to any male in Ireland, at any time.

When Eileen married him and took his name, Brennan desperately wanted to feel flattered. He tried the angle that women were not doing this sort of thing any more. But Eileen just laughed, told him she loved him. She kissed his cheek.

‘Besides,’ she said, ‘Eileen Brennan works.’

With a crackle of clarity, Brennan realised that like him, the beautiful Eileen would be condemned to a life of mediocrity."

We next meet Brennan five years later.  It is his fifth wedding anniversary and he is on his normal forty-five minute train ride home.  He has a decent job.    I loved the scene where he watched a woman put on her make up.  It is kind of a metaphor for his life.  The subdued closing brings him full circle.  We see what begins as a blessing can return as a something very different,  

You can read "Yellow Leaning to Gold" by Shauna Gilligan at thelonelycrowd.org

Official Author Bio 

Shauna Gilligan‘s short fiction and reviews have been published in places such as The Stinging Fly (Ireland), New Welsh Review (UK) and Cobalt (USA). She holds a PhD (Writing) from the University of South Wales and teaches writing as part of the Arts Council of Ireland Writers in Prisons Panel. Her first novel, Happiness Comes from Nowhere (London, Ward Wood: 2012), was described by the Sunday Independent in Ireland as a ‘thoroughly enjoyable and refreshingly challenging debut novel.

Mel u

"The Sound of Swallows" by Shauna Gilligan, PhD (from The Stinging Fly, Spring, 2014)

""They've gone and what's left of them is made of twigs and mud: nests empty and useless".

I first became acquainted with the work of Shauna Gilligan during Irish Short Story Month Year Two.  since then I have posted on a number of her short stories and her wonderful debut novel, Happiness Comes From Nowhere.  At her suggestion I first began to read the work of Desmond Hogan and she did a very illuminating post on him for my blog.  She has also done a very interesting and informative Q and A I urge all to read.  

Today I want to post briefly on her very powerful short story, "The Sound of Swallows" which can be found in the Spring 2014 issue of The Stinging Fly.  The Stinging Fly is a leading world class publisher of literary works.  

As I read on in Irish literature I see more and more, of course people see what they can and want to see, certain pervasive themes recurring over and over.  An obsession with, almost a love, for death, not so much one's own, but that of those we love.  Only when a person is dead does the fluidity of our experience of them come to an end.  I also see a fascination with cycles of futility, recurring pain and loss whose only value maybe in the wisdom gained from observing them.  I also see a strong pattern of works depicting the impact of repressed emotions blocking relationships growing beyond limited starts, relationships that long term bring mostly pain. I also see as a strong theme that of the weak or missing father married to a smothering mother.  I see, learning from Edward Said and his disciple Declan Kiberd, a working out of the legacy of colonialism. These are not just old ideas from long ago. I read this week Sebastian Barry's forthcoming novel, The Temporary Gentleman and these themes dominate it.     All of this can be seen in Gilligan's five page "The Sound of Swallows".

The story is being published today in The Stinging Fly.  I am not inclined too much to recap the plot but I will just talk a bit about how it exemplifies the themes I have spoken about above and numerous times.  The story covers some twenty years in the life of the woman narrating the story. First her father dies from cancer at which point her mother throws her temporarily out of the house, only to become dependent on the daughter.  The narrator had a mildly sexual relationship with another woman, Maribel when in her late teens.  The narrator conceives a child in a one night encounter with what seems a very decent man to whom she gave a false phone number.  The man is forced into the role of unknown missing father in the life of the child.  Then her mother dies. After a twenty year hiatus, she moved it seems to Denver, Maribel returns.  The narrator tries to see in her the beauty she once had.  Beauty lost is one of Ireland's grand themes.   The ending is profoundly sad.  The close powerfully sums up the themes I have ruminated upon.

my q and a with Shauna Gilligan 

http://rereadinglives.blogspot.com/2013/03/shauna-gilligan-question-and-answer.html

My post on Happiness Comes from Nowhere

http://rereadinglives.blogspot.com/2012/07/happiness-comes-from-no-where-by-shauna.html

I hope to read much more of Gilligan.  I strongly endorse her novel, which I think may become a classic. 

Mel u

 

Shauna Gilligan Two New Short Stories from the author of Happiness Comes from Nowhere

Posts by and about Shauna Gilligan

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Shauna Gilligan, author of Happiness Comes from Nowhere, is an author whose work I have been following for over a year now.  In addition to posting on her wonderful novel, I have shared my thoughts on a number of her marvelous short stories with my readers.   She has also contributed several guests posts to The Reading Life, including an introductory post to my on going project on the work of Desmond Hogan.  She also contributed a very informative Q and A Session during Irish Short Story Month Year III.

I was very happy when I found she has recently published two more short stories (both of which can be read online)

"Remains"   is a brief work that centers on the marriage of a woman to a man twenty six years her senior.   The opening line of the story caught my attention:  "Our house is full of dead people's furniture".   I have said before that there is a strong preoccupation, almost a love, for death in much of Irish literature.  She lives in the house where her husband lived with his first wife.   The woman, I think, married a much older man in the buried somewhere in the darker regions of her psyche hope he will die much earlier than she does so she can spend many years with a dead man as the leading person in her life.  "Remains" lets us see how things take on  life of their own.  It also sharply depicts the need of the new wife to make the grand house they live in her own, building up a shield for the long forthcoming time of the domination of death over life.

You can read this story at Olentangyreview.com.

"Bachelor's Beep" centers on a woman, fifty years of age, with six children.   She struggles to make ends meet and when we first meet her she has just been rejected as a renter of a house that would have been perfect for them.  The landlord did not want that many kids in his house.   She is separated from her husband.   There is a lot in this story and my main purpose in this post is to let my readers know of this new story.  I greatly enjoyed it and recommend it as very much worth your time.

(You can read this story at Thegalywayreview.com)


Mel u

"In Three Days" by Shauna Gilligan (2013, from The Lakeview International Journal of Literature and the Arts)

March 1 to April 14

Shauna Gilligan

Prior posts about and by Shauna Gilligan

I have posted a lot on the work of Shauna Gilligan.  I would not have done so if I did not greatly admire her work.  She has also kindly guest posted on The Reading Life several times and has answered lots of questions about Irish literature for me.   My main purpose in this post is to let my readers know that her latest story, "In Three Days" was published in the first edition of The Lakeview International Journal of Literature and the Arts (in the interests of full

disclosure, I am on the advisory board).  The journal has already been shortlisted for an international award.  We are proud of our list of authors from all over the world. There are short stories, poems, reviews and interviews as well as some stunning images. (You can read the entire first issue here.)   There is also a premier print edition.   The first edition has stories by writers from all over the world and Ireland is well represented by Gilligan.

"In Three Days" is the story of how two sisters, both unmarried and in their late 30s or early 40s and living with their father as they always have, cope with his death on a  late Monday night.  Their mother died three years ago.  Of course they talk about what they need to do.  Gilligan does a masterful job of letting us see into minds of the sisters, we can see how they are the same in someways, but each different also.  One sister is very practical and begins to make a list of things they need to do.  The other is more vulnerable and nervy.  The story is told in three day by day segments.  We see how the sisters begin to deal mentally with this event.  Their father had been a terminal cancer patient and they nursed him at home.  We learn some interesting things about the sisters lives.  We feel their sadness but also a great weight has been lifted from them.  Anyone who has ever cared for a terminal patient in their home will relate well and see the very strong verisimilitude in this story.   

Author Bio

Born in Dublin, Ireland, Shauna Gilligan has worked and lived in Mexico, Spain, India and the UK. She holds an MA in History from University College Dublin having also studied English as an undergraduate. She is completing a PhD in Writing at the University of Glamorgan, Wales and occasionally lectures in NUI Maynooth in Creative Writing.

As part of her research, she is examining suicide and writing processes in a selection of novels by and in a series of interviews with Irish writer Desmond Hogan.

Her work has been published in The Cobalt Review, The Stinging Fly (online), The First Cut, New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writingand in The Ulster Tatler’s Literary Miscellany. She has given public readings of her fiction in Ireland and USA and has presented on writing at academic conferences in Ireland, UK, Germany and USA.

Her debut novel, Happiness Comes From Nowhere is receiving great reviews from all over the world.

Mel u