A Novel is a Lengthy Question: An Interview with Frank Ronan

Frank Ronan has published a collection of short stories, Handsome Men Are Slightly Sunburnt (1996), and six novels, The Men Who Loved Evelyn Cotton(1989), A Picnic in Eden (1991), The Better Angel (1992), Dixie Chicken (1994), Lovely (1996) and Home (2002), many of which have been translated into French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Italian, Greek and Dutch. It is extremely difficult to pigeonhole Ronan’s writing and, according to him, it is also pointless since “it’s always the people who don’t read books who want to categorise them”. The following interview throws some new light on this brilliant contemporary Irish writer and his multifarious areas of interest.