In Conversation: Louise Nealon & Glenn Patterson
Queen’s Alumni and the Seamus Heaney Centre are delighted to present Louise Nealon, for the latest edition of the Book Club.
Louise Nealon is joined by Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre, Glenn Patterson, to discuss her debut novel Snowflake (Manilla, 2021).
Irish author and Queen’s University graduate Louise Nealon became a literary sensation last year when her debut novel, Snowflake, was sold for a six-figure sum. Shortly afterwards, film and TV rights were snapped up by Element Pictures, the same Irish production company behind the seven-times Bafta-nominated adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People.
Snowflake, tells the story of Debbie, a young girl living on her family’s dairy farm with her mentally ill mother, Maeve, and her uncle Billy, who lives in a caravan on the farm and has a problematic relationship with alcohol. Meanwhile, Debbie is struggling to negotiate the alienating transition from school to university, from farm to big city, from childhood to adulthood.
Debbie struggles to cope with the weirdest, most difficult parts of herself, her family and her small life. But the fierce love of the White family is never in doubt, and Debbie discovers that even the oddest of families are places of safety. A startling, honest, laugh and cry novel about growing up and leaving home, only to find that you’ve taken it with you. Snowflake is a novel for a generation, and for everyone who’s taken those first, terrifying steps towards adulthood.
Picture by Gerry Mooney