Julie Parsons' debut novel Mary, Mary is a tense, psychological thriller set in modern day Dublin, which has garnered worldwide acclaim since its publication last year. The New York Times described it as "a first novel of astonishing emotional impact , while the film rights have already been snapped up by none other than U2 manager Paul McGuinness. The book has sold out in hardback in Ireland the paperback is due out shortly and it has already been translated into Dutch, German, Spanish and Japanese, with further international editions to come.
The plot centres around the rape, murder and mutilation of a 20-year-old girl and her mother's reaction in the immediate aftermath. While the story is a familiar one coping with the emotional fallout after the loss of a loved one and the desperate search for justice the style is detailed and complex, with each of the characters explored in unusual depth.
According to Parsons, a former RTE producer (and Hot Press journalist), the central idea for Mary, Mary came to her one morning while she was going to work on the DART.
"I went home that evening, sat down and wrote out the synopsis," she relates. "A couple of the other elements contained in the story came to me and it began to take on a dynamic of its own. I wrote a pretty thorough synopsis in the end but I didn't feel I could write the whole book in a vacuum I wanted to get some kind of commitment from a publisher. I had read in one of those, 'how to get published' books that you should write the first few chapters and send it to a publisher, which is what I did."
Parsons had met Treasa Coady of Town House Books through her work as a producer on the Gay Byrne radio show and decided to approach her in the first instance. From then on things seemed to take on a momentum of their own, as she explains.
"She rang back immediately and said she liked it and offered me a contract. So I took six months unpaid leave of absence from RTE and set about writing it."
It took Parsons about nine months to finish the book, which involved a good deal of research and re-writing. When she handed the finished product to Town House they immediately sold it to Macmillan who in turn took it to the Frankfurt Book Fair where it was sold internationally. The fact that all of this happened before the book was published took her completely by surprise.
"I thought maybe if I'm lucky it'll be taken up by an English publisher but I never thought it would be sold internationally. There was an auction for the German rights, one for the American rights. Then they said it's been sold to Holland, Denmark, Sweden, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Bulgaria, Greece. It's really quite nice when you get a phone call saying 'oh by the way the Czech Republic have just taken it . It's called value added in the publishing business. You write it and get a small amount in the beginning and it hopefully grows."
Given the nature of the subject matter, much of the detail within the book concerns the gruesome details of the murder itself, the discovery of the body and subsequent visit to the morgue. Parsons concedes that at times during the writing she felt uncomfortable with some of the material she was dealing with.
"There would be occasions when I would feel quite unsettled and queasy quite sick actually. I realised that it was usually when I was writing from the point of view of Jimmy, the killer. I'd find that I would need to go out and get some fresh air for a while before continuing."
Mary, Mary is impressively precise in it's use of contemporary locations in and around Dublin even The Globe pub in George's Street gets a mention, with the southside area around Monkstown also featuring heavily throughout
"It's important to have those things right," she says. "There are a lot of people out there who like picking up on things like that. I discovered quite late, at the proof-reading stage, that I had one of the characters walking from the Central Bank and turning right, off Dame street to get to Blooms Hotel, when he should, of course have been turning left."
Another method employed to good effect in the novel is the flashback techniques which Parsons says probably comes from her editing experience in radio and TV: "It's basically about not saying everything immediately, holding back and revealing things slowly and letting things develop. It's not that you don't know what's happened, it's the finding out how it has happened."
Though she says there's nothing particularly autobiographical about the story there are elements of her own life contained within the book. "I wasn't conscious when I was doing it but when I read it I realised that a lot of my family experiences were in it. I have a daughter around the same age as the girl in the book and the father figure is notably absent my own father died when I was very young. I sent a copy to my brother in America and he said to me that it was all in there."
Despite the almost universal praise Mary Mary has attracted, Parsons admits that it has had a strange effect on her own behaviour, at times.
"You can become what I describe as a 'praise junkie'," she explains. "If you don't have somebody telling you how great you are all the time you begin to feel bad. I go through phases where I'm constantly getting faxes from people, depending on what stage the book is at. You get lots of praise, then nothing but silence for a few days and you think 'oh my god what's wrong? .
"The bookshop thing is completely bizarre , she continues. "You walk in and you're wondering, 'is it here? Where is it?' Then you see a big pile of them on the floor and you think 'oh god they've loads of them and nobody wants to buy it'. If you don't see any you think 'god they're not even stocking it they don't want it'. I used to be a great bookshop browser but now I don't bother for that reason.
She also confesses to having occasional doubts about her own abilities as a writer.
"I don't read fiction any more," she admits. "I can't, it's totally intimidating. I'm terrified I'll pick up a book and it'll be so wonderful that I'll never write another word."
Although she's been asked to write the screenplay for a possible future film of the book Parsons has declined, preferring to stick to writing books. Her second novel The Courtship Gift is due out this autumn with another already in the planning stage.
"I believe they're talking to script-writers at the moment and I'm obviously interested in what they do with it. But it's a long journey making a film and it's still at the early stages." n
Mary Mary is published by Town House Dublin.