Publication of new book - Dark could over Muckish - set in west Donegal

When Glaswegian Paul O’Donaghue ends up in lockdown after travelling to a small village on the north coast of Donegal for his mother’s funeral, he’s not unduly worried.

After all, Mullaghbeg, with its green fields, rugged Atlantic coastline and myriad childhood memories waiting to be unlocked provides the perfect antidote to the doom and gloom of a world ravaged mercilessly by the Covid pandemic.

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But Paul soon discovers that life in his rural haven is not all about coastal walks and afternoons devoted to watching A Place in the Sun. When not feuding with his land-grabbing neighbour, or being interrogated by the Gardai, he’s worrying about the contents of the holdall he has stashed under his bed, and the prospect of a hitman appearing any minute at his front door.

Meanwhile, he finds himself negotiating a world populated by an assortment of quirky characters, where the eccentric and bizarre become his ‘new normal’. A 400 km road trip in a hearse, however, was not something he’d envisaged …

Being set against the backdrop of the pandemic may give Paul’s new novel a universal relevance, but there is much in Dark Cloud Over Muckish that is distinctly Donegal-esque.

“The writer Maggie O’Farrell has said that authors don’t find the book; it finds them," he says. "In my case, it didn’t have far to travel! In writing about Donegal and its people, I’m in familiar territory. If pushed, I’d describe myself as a Donegal Glaswegian.

“Like many of the Irish diaspora in my part of the world, I’ve been coming to the county on my summer holidays since I was knee high. Hopefully, my love of the place and its people ( their kindness, common decency and remarkable sense of community) is something I succeed in bringing out in the book.

“The catalyst for the story was my mother’s funeral in Donegal during Covid. The experience of that sparsely populated chapel on a cold, bleak November morning will remain forever etched in my memory. It was an experience, however, which also brought me back to my roots. Being there in the midst of my ‘Irish family’, and a landscape I’d known since childhood, evoked a palpable sense of belonging in me - the opening chapter is entitled ‘Coming Home’. There’s a strong focus on identity.

“While the story is set in the aftermath of her death, I wanted it to celebrate the person my mother was: a hardy Donegal woman (‘fiercely determined’), who thought nothing of undertaking a three-mile round trip on foot to school each day ‘ in a era when children being driven to the school gates by parents in four-wheel drives was the stuff of science fiction.”

The flashbacks which evoke my experiences with her (a dementia sufferer)in her latter years are filled with a lot of raw emotion. Writing it was a cathartic and emotional process.

“Anyone who picks up the book and looks at the cover or reads the blurb will realise there’s also a lot of humour in the story,” Paul adds. “I mean, you can’t write a book set in Donegal and not bring out the wonderful eccentricity that exists in this part world: the host of quirky characters who grace its pages are not figments of my imagination! And then there’s the classic Donegal land feud at the centre of the narrative. It’s not without good reason that readers of the book will think they already know ‘Mullaghbeg’.”

Dark Cloud Over Muckish by Paul O’Donaghue, published by Anchor House Press, is available on Amazon, Bookmark stores (Letterkenny), and other worldwide outlets.