News: Eoin McNamee’s BLUE IS THE NIGHT wins the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year

It’s turning into something of an Eoin McNamee week on CAP, which is never a bad thing. The heartiest of congrats to Eoin (right), whose excellent BLUE IS THE NIGHT (Faber) last night won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year last night, the prize awarded on the opening night of the Listowel Writers’ Week.
  I interviewed Eoin on the publication of BLUE IS THE NIGHT, and he had this to say about the central mystery at the book’s heart:

“I always like to quote Francis Bacon,” says Eoin, “who said that the job of all art is to deepen the mystery. This book is about the mystery of Patricia Curran, and what really happened to her, and by extension the mystery she inherited from her family, her father and her mother.
  “I started out originally, perhaps, to find out who killed Patricia Curran,” he continues, “but the book became about something other than that. It became more about ‘What is mystery?’ What is it that drives these stories, that drives people’s compulsion towards these stories?”

  For the rest of the interview, clickety-click here …
  For more on the Kerry Group awards, clickety-click here …