‘Aisling’ follow-up makes for ‘deadly summer’ reading
Authors Sarah Breen from Borris and Emer McLysaght from Kill, Co Kildare.
“I THINK people from Carlow are the funniest people in the world,” said Sarah Breen, co-author of , who grew up in Borris.
“Everybody always has a funny, quick word to say to anyone that they could possibly meet. And that is such a skill and such a talent, and I don’t know if Dublin people have that.”
Emer McLysaght, the book’s other co-author, who is from near Kill in Kildare, agreed, albeit more broadly: “I do think Ireland as a whole just has so many little pockets of humour and different slang.”
Humour was a huge part of the women’s breakout adult fiction book , the beginning of a popular five-book series detailing Aisling’s transition from living at home with her parents to living in Dublin with friends.
Last month, they released their latest book , which features an entirely different cast and setting: that of J1 student visa America.
The story “is about two friends who meet at college and become sort of instant besties. And they head off to America on the J1 visa summer of their dreams. And while they’re there, through a series of unfortunate events, they end up with a dead body on their hands,” Sarah explained.
Both Sarah and Emer travelled to the USA in their early 20s. “We wanted to capture that feeling of being completely free,” said Emer. “Most of all, we wanted to capture the kind of recklessness that comes with that early adulthood, where you’re technically allowed to do whatever you want, but you’re like, I don’t really know what I’m doing and you take so many risks.”
The co-authors met while studying at Ballyfermot College of Further Education and started hanging out together all the time. “It’s such a coming-of-age experience to be living with your friends and just having the craic all the time. That definitely inspired the books and also Dee and Laura in .”
Emer was living at home at the time and, much like Dee and Laura, she used to stay with Sarah all the time, alongside a group of girls from the country that she describes as “culchie transplants”. She added: “It was such an amazing time – it was just brilliant.”
After completing the series, the pair wanted to challenge themselves. “Structurally, is a bit more complicated. We have our dual perspectives and we are going back and forth in time ... it’s less linear than an book,” said Sarah.
“Our two protagonists are in their mid-40s, looking back at that summer, and we find out that they haven’t spoken in almost 24 years,” Sarah continued. “The humour is a little bit darker. It’s a little bit edgier, but I do think that it’s kind of what people have come to expect from us.”
Emer adds: “While we worked hard to make sure we weren’t just replicating the same characters, I think the girls, Laura and Dee, the main characters, would definitely exist in Aisling’s universe.”
Part of the book is nostalgic for the J1 experience of the early 2000s, when Emer and Sarah left their mobile phones behind, but characters Laura and Dee do reflect on how the world has changed over the past two decades.
“America continues to have a massive impact, but I don’t know if the J1 experience is still the same,” said Emer.
“We are certainly not as enamoured with America as we used to be when Emer and I were teenagers,” added Sarah. “Because you are spoon-fed all these movies and music and everything, and you really do feel like it is the greatest place on earth. And I think you only have to turn on the news for 15 minutes now and you realise, you know what? Maybe I don’t want a part of that.”
is published by Bloomsbury, and Sarah and Emer are hoping that this and the fact that the book isn’t as ‘parochial’ as the series will launch them onto the UK market.
They said they loved working with their new editor and, of course, each other.
“I think the fact that we’ve been able to work together so closely on six books and we’ve never had a falling out over it really speaks to kind of the specialness of our friendship,” said Emer. “We still have a laugh all the time. Like, we’re not dreading seeing each other or it hasn’t become a slog.”
Sarah’s analysis of their relationship is that “we are very good at compartmentalising our work. We might go away on a two-week holiday with friends and once in two weeks one of us might swim up to the other one in the pool and go, ‘wouldn’t that be a good idea for a book?’ and then swim away and never, ever talk about work again.”
Their favourite slogan? “We’re on our holidays.”
