Author interview: Eibhlís Carcione: 'My love of spooky stories goes back to my childhood'

IT’S THE most miserable of autumn days when I chat to the children’s writer Eibhlís Carcione; so rainy that I got soaked on the 30-step journey between the house and my writing cabin.

“It’s the same in Cork,” Eibhlís tells me, over Zoom. “It’s very dark here; very gothic.”

Perfect weather, in other words, to discuss Black Gables, Eibhlís’s spine-chillingly scary book, set beside a lake in the creepiest school in the world.

It features Rosella Fawley, a girl forced to move from the city to a backward village, because her mother has lost her memory in an accident — and her father hopes returning his wife to the place she grew up in might work some magic.

With her mother in a local hospital, Rosella attends Black Gables school, and is aware, from her first sight of the silent children, and the mean Blake and Christobel, that something is very clearly awry. And that’s before the school day even begins.

In wonderfully atmospheric prose, the book introduces us to a band of beyond-weird teachers with their strange pets; and the ghouls who rise up from the lake, and seem to commune with Mr Edge, the evil headmaster. But why do the townspeople love Mr Edge, and think the school is the best in the world?

Could it be that the mist from the lake that sends its tendrils around the town somehow sedates the inhabitants?

Rosella tries to make friends, but the only contender is a girl in an orange coat who, mysteriously, keeps disappearing. Determined to speak out, rather than join the quiet children in abject obedience, Rosella immediately clashes with the staff, is branded a troublemaker, and is constantly picked on.

Undeterred, she continues to search for answers.

Home life isn’t great, either. Her father, working from the house, is stressed and worried, and visits to her mum don’t provide any solace, because her mother hasn’t a clue who Rosella is.

You’d think someone with the imagination to produce such a gothic tale might have a dark mind. Not so. To say that Eibhlís is a glass-half-full person would be to underestimate it.

Positivity and sheer enthusiasm flow from her. She loves reading, Irish folklore, fairy tales, and poetry; and she adores her day job of primary school teaching.

“It’s not really like a job,” she says. “You can do so many different things. And you can plan something exciting for a Thursday. In my first job, in Wicklow, we’d go down to the seafront and watch birds and go on nature trails.” She also loves teaching maths, even though it challenged her as a child.

“I loved animals and wanted to do veterinary, but maths was not my strongest point. I think I enjoy teaching it because I found it hard. I praise the children and give them time and they really respond. That gives me a great sense of satisfaction.”

She enjoys everything about writing, too.

When I ask her what her dream ‘other life’ would be, she says she’s already living it. And although writing wasn’t her ambition growing up in the Beara Peninsula, her love of spooky stories started there.

“It goes back to Rapunzel and the words of CS Lewis,” she says, “and I always loved Irish folklore. As a teenager, I loved the feeling I got reading Wuthering Heights and Daphne Du Maurier.”

Eibhlís’s writing life started with poetry. She has won several prizes and has produced three collections in the Irish language. As well as writing about various wars around the world, she has concentrated on natural disasters.

“I’m passionate about climate change and have been involved in the Green Schools Movement,” she says. “We did a play about climate change. I’ve written poems in Irish about the wildfires in Australia, about the floods and the tsunamis — it’s all very frightening.”

What would she say to encourage people to learn Irish?

“It’s just a beautiful language,” she says, her face lighting up. “It’s so expressive and it has to do with our landscape our folklore and our imaginations.

“And we’ve had great writers of Irish. People like Pádraic Ó Conaire, who has written some of the most powerful short stories I have ever read.”

From poetry, Eibhlís switched to prose. “It’s harder to tell a longer narrative in poetry,” she explained.

“I started with a few plays. Theatre Upstairs did a reading with actors for one of them. And then I wrote a changeling story as a book, and sent it off to agents.

“I got some good feedback and wrote two more books and had some near-misses.”

Hard though the rejection was, Eibhlís says that the words of encouragement she received along the way kept her going.

“They said the writing was good.” She gained help, too, from Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin of the resource for writers’ website, writing.ie, getting a manuscript assessment and a ‘date with an agent’.

“And when I sent out the next book, the agent on the top of my list, Silvia Molteni, of PFD, asked for the full manuscript and took me on.”

That book — Welcome to Dead Town Raven McKay — which came out last year to rave reviews, showed a town where dead people lived side by side with the living.

Black Gables, too, has a ghostly element, mingling the past and the present as a sense of foreboding infuses the text.

How did she get the idea for the book?

“It was the idea of a child moving schools, leaving their friends, and starting in this scary place where all the staff are creepy. We all remember our first day of school, but moving at 10, 11 or 12 is terrible, especially if your circumstances are not good at home.

“I’ve encountered children like that, and like with Rosella, their circumstances can be very bad. When Rosella tells her father what is going on, he can’t believe it, because the whole locality seems to be under the enchantment of the school principal.”

Real-life inspiration

Have real-life teachers inspired her to invent such monsters as Ms Rock, Ms Bone, and Ms Bugly? Deflecting my question, she says that we’ve all met unusual people, including some who are very flawed.

“And we can all have wool pulled over our eyes and think they are wonderful people.”

As the plot thickens, and the pace ramps up, Rosella gets closer to finding out the secrets behind the school. Will she be able to defeat the powers of evil? It’s a nail-biting finish, one children are bound to adore.

Living in Cork with her Italian-American husband and 17-year-old daughter, Eibhlís is currently on a break from the day job.

“Although I do a bit of supply teaching,” she says.

She likes nothing better than to read, listen to classical music, and walk with her two dogs, the basset hound Luna, and Maddie, a cocker spaniel. She’s loving the byproducts of this recent publication.

“I’ve met six different groups of children in different libraries in Cork, and I’m going to the Dublin Book Festival in November,” she says

She’s also mentoring a children’s YA writer through the Munster Literature Centre, but her fans needn’t worry. She’s not too busy to write. There’s another children’s book and a new collection of poetry on the way. What would her advice to new writers be?

“Nothing you write is ever wasted,” she says. “Keep working on your craft to get it right and keep writing. It may not be published, but you have created something.”