A shock from start to finish

The Good Life with Gemma Good.

Throwing a party and inviting the readers to come along and meet the characters. That’s how Keith Ridgeway described his 2021 novel ‘A Shock’ in a recent lecture he gave to our Contemporary Irish Literature class.

“Here’s a bunch of people that I really like, meet them,” he said of the novel.

Although my Irish lit lecture takes place on a Friday evening (not ideal for returning home traffic) I look forward to it each week and rarely miss it. For the past two weeks we have been reading and debating Keith Ridgeway’s novel ‘A Shock’.

In our most recent lecture, Keith came online from London to chat to us about his writing process and the book we had been studying. This is the first time I have read a book and have had the opportunity to speak to the author about it. Having spoken to the author, I need to re-read the book. Learning about his thought process at the time of writing and what his intentions were for the novel was intriguing. I not only missed a few themes, but I also created my own, which the author revealed he hadn’t even thought of. The beauty (and perhaps the downfall) of writing is that, once it’s published, an author has no control over the mind of the reader.

The book is not an easy read. Like Keith said, each chapter introduces a different character to the reader. In the lecture, he explained that he does not base any of his characters on real people, however the places in the novel are real. Each of the characters are in some ways connected to people encountered in other chapters of the novel. While reading, I found that you really have to do the work to understand these characters and what they are going through.

Firstly, Keith discussed the title - ‘A Shock’. Each of the characters goes through something that shocks their lives. He explained how he was interested in the idea of something shocking not always being a bad thing, and that some shocks can be quite good for you. One character in the novel says to people ‘May your death come as a shock to you’ when departing them. I thought it a strange thing to say to somebody, but when you think about it, it is beautiful. To wish somebody a quick death with no suffering. I don’t think I’ll start using it in my everyday conversations but take it as an example of the quirky ways in which the novel will shock you – not necessarily in a bad way.

In line with the theme of shocking you, so many aspects of the lecture with Keith shocked me. When I read, I don’t often consider the personality of the author, which is something that will change after this lecture. Keith is a Dubliner living in London. He must be the most humble and down to earth person I have ever listened to. He pretty much started out by openly admitting that he doesn’t like the award-winning novel and didn’t really have any intentions while writing it.

“I’m not an academic and I don’t think of my work in what you might call academic terms,” he said.

“I don’t see myself at all I just do it [write],” he said.

His subtle character is somehow incorporated in the novel. There are several themes throughout, however they are not a flashing beacon. Each person will pick up on a different one depending on their own personality and interests.

With the novel published in 2021, I read it as one emanating from the period of the pandemic. I planned to focus on the work as literature emerging from COVID-19 for my final essay. Throughout my reading I had highlighted elements of what I thought were references to lockdown. For example, the characters take extreme interest in what others are doing and pay great attention to small details. I believed this stemmed from the fact that people had nothing better to do other than involve themselves in other people’s lives. I picked up on the theme of being trapped, stemming from the mentality of being in a restrictive period. There are other elements too, like meeting people online, storytelling, I even thought the political element of the novel resonated with how we all became extremely interested in the government’s next move.

I raised the point with Keith and told him that I read the novel as one reflecting on living through a pandemic. He was shocked and informed me that he worked on the novel before the pandemic was even a thing. He told me that one doesn’t have to be in a pandemic to feel trapped - he was absolutely right.

Ridgway expressed his love for fiction saying the power of it “is something that exists outside of the novels we read”. In other words, the novel is there for the taking of the readers. Once published, the author has no control over the reader’s imagination or how they receive it. What we take from a novel is purely individual, and that’s the beauty of reading.