I find being Irish quite a wearing thing. It takes so much work because it is a social construction. People think you are going to be this, this, and this.

You write a book and you finish the book. That's your job done, right? You win the Booker and you have a whole new job. You have to be the thing, right? So instead of writing the story, you somehow are the story. And that I found that sort of terrible.

I was raised in a very old fashioned Ireland where women were reared to be lovely.

A drinker does not exist. Whatever they say, it is just the drink talking.

I'm very keenly aware that there aren't very many women writing literary fiction in Ireland and so that gives me a sense that what I say matters, in some small way.

I work at the sentences. Many of the things people find distinctive about my writing, I think of as natural.

If you can just actually let the character be for a bit, then you get the right sense.