LITLLE did Sara Baume know that when she moved from Dublin to Co Cork that she would end up becoming an acclaimed writer and getting invited to literary festivals in Zagreb and (perhaps less exotically) Belfast.
Baume was born in England but brought up in Co Cork and after a spell in Dublin she and her boyfriend decamped from there as the rents there were escalating.
While her background is in fine art and sculpture, Baume’s natural gift for writing was recognised when she won the 2014 Davy Byrnes Short Story Award for her story Solesearcher1.
Now it’s her exceptional debut novel, Spill Simmer Falter Wither, that is making waves and deservedly so. It is divided into four sections (Spill, Simmer, Falter, Wither), reflecting the four seasons (spring, summer, fall/autumn, winter) and the tale is told through the eyes of a 57-year-old man called Ray, whose only friend is his dog One-Eye. Baume’s brilliantly vivid descriptions of both man and beast and their isolated existence mark her out as a true literary talent.
“I think there's loads of me [in Ray]; it's in the little details. I tried various different voices and ended up making him an older man. I see several old men with dogs and I think everyone knows this `man and his dog' – even though they don't actually know them.
“The one-eyed dog is the true one. It's more like an autobiography of my dog,” she laughs.
Praise has been raining down on the book, which has just been picked up by the William Heinemann publisher in the UK. They declared Baume to be a “unique talent” and called Spill Simmer Falter Wither “an exceptionally original and impressive work”.
Fellow novelist Joseph O’Connor gushed in his review that the book was “a stunning and wonderful achievement by a writer touched by greatness”, while Mary Costello, Colin Barrett and Eimear McBride are also fans.
“I've been really lucky. It means more when a fellow writer reviews your book,” says Baume. “I could never be someone who didn't read the reviews, so I was very nervous before it came out.”
Baume was at the Listowel Writers’ Festival last weekend and spoke to The Irish News ahead of her trips to Zagreb and Belfast.
“I'm going to the Festival of the European Short Story in Zagreb and the only other name I know is Lionel Shriver. I've only been up to Belfast once before, when I came up to write about visual art. It’s great. I’m used to being in the audience at festivals and now suddenly I'm up on the podium.”
She says winning the Davy Byrnes award last year was “brilliant”. “I had signed my deal with Tramp Press and then I won that prize, so it kind of felt like the faith that they'd invested in me paid off in some sense. It's a great boost. Prizes are so arbitrary and obviously not all writers can win, so I'm very grateful.”
She has started work on her next novel already and says she is over the moon with how things have taken off for her.
“I'd been writing short stories for a long time and I wanted to finish a longer work and I'm just lucky I got a publishing deal. Writing it in four sections was almost a way of tricking myself into writing a novel, because I'd always written short stories before; it made it less intimidating.
“I wouldn't have thought that such a quiet strange little book would have got such interest. The lesson is just write what you write and don't try and write what you think will sell.”
:: Sara Baume appears twice at the Belfast Book Festival next Wednesday: at the Ulster Hall at 1pm and along with Claire-Louise Bennett and Danielle McLaughlin at the Crescent Arts Centre (8.30pm). Spill Simmer Falter Wither is out now, published by Tramp Press.
