In Dialogue with Elaine Garvey
On the Concept of "Shall" as an Actual Word the British Use in a Sentence
👋 This post continues a series of interviews with authors. You can read the first one, an interview with Declan Toohey, here. Elaine Garvey is the author of The Wardrobe Department (2025, Canongate). Her writing has appeared in The Dublin Review and Winter Papers, among other places.
The Wardrobe Department is an incredibly written novel following Mairéad Sweeney, a young Irishwoman working in the wardrobe department of a London theatre company circa 2002. It is one of the strongest debut novels I’ve read and is available at most booksellers, including Books Upstairs.
Our interview was conducted over e-mail and then edited for flow, as I tend to use four sentences where one does just fine.
I find the binary of good guys and bad guys — the idea that someone is either good or bad — blocks the question of where does the desire to dominate come from?
Elaine,
There's much to admire about this book. The characters are fully realized and lived in. The technical work on the sentence level is excellent. The narrative moves, both in terms of momentum and in that it literally moves from London to Ireland and back, geographical changes rendered as beautifully distinct milieus.
What struck me most is how confidently focused its central theme is, how concerned it is at every opportunity with the pervasive nature of gendered power dynamics. It appears in every conversation Mairéad has with co-workers, bosses, and — back home — her family. It's in the way she's asked to fix a costume at work or expected to cook the post-funeral breakfast. It's in the way she hopes her mother will say something to her father but doesn't.
Was this concern always central to the story you wanted to tell, or was it instead something that became clear through revision? Which is another way of asking: what was the seed of this story you felt most driven to write that flowered into this novel? And conversely, did you start with anything you thought was essential that ultimately didn't make it into the text?
James
James,
It's interesting that you picked up on the power dynamics immediately. The first scene I wrote where I knew I had a story is towards the beginning of the book, where one character says: 'Everybody talks. Everybody wants to talk.' That line of dialogue unlocked something for me. Being able to say what you want without fear of consequences is a position of power. Not everybody wants to talk. In some scenes of this novel, nobody wants to talk. I was listening to a radio interview between Seán Rocks and Jared Harris on Arena (RTÉ Radio 1) and Jared Harris said: 'People in power are always lying.' That struck me as both shocking and true. All genders, all backgrounds. When we are in a position of power, we lie to protect that position, to exclude others, and we lie to ourselves about why we are lying. I wanted to explore that.
As The Wardrobe Department is set in 2002, it was more likely that the person who owned the company or inherited the land or earned more money and had fewer caring responsibilities would be male, so I can see how it could be understood as a commentary on the limitations imposed by gender stereotypes. And the division of labour in the theatre is gendered. However, there are different forms of abuse of power in the novel, mirrored throughout by several characters, male and female. I find the binary of good guys and bad guys — the idea that someone is either good or bad — blocks the question of where does the desire to dominate come from? I've been asked a few times why there are no 'good men' in the novel. Isn't that interesting? The need for reassurance, so we can say, 'Well, I identify with the clearly defined good guys. There's no need for me to examine my behaviour or attitudes.'
The main character in my book, Mairéad Sweeney, is often wrong about other people’s intentions and she is quite biased when we first meet her. Suppressing uncomfortable questions does not make them go away and, in various ways, including her attitude to her own body, Mairéad starts to question what she has been taught, how selective was it, what was left out? If her colleagues do not know about her beliefs, what does she really know of theirs?
Did I start with anything essential that ultimately didn't make it in to the final text? Yes. About fifteen years of wrong-headedness. Making this story was a slow process.
Elaine
Elaine,
It's interesting you mention being asked about "good men" in your book, I've fielded similar questions around my novel, Placeholders, and found them to similarly reveal much more about the person asking or a broader social context than the book itself. As in — as you rightly point out — why does a question like this need asking?
Lately, I've noticed a trend in contemporary literary fiction that so long as a novel is well written, it is considered important. Art exists as a transmission of emotion, and these works are certainly art (or, at the very least, artful). The writing it taut, the narratives are lean, they're massively impacting. But whether because we live in such turbulent times — or because I'm an American and feel personally implicated in so much of that turbulence — I find myself increasingly drawn to books today that takes some kind of political risk, that serve to illuminate or confront something concrete. And I mean political very broadly here, just having to do with systems of power. I'm in the midst of editing a novel that will come out some time next year and have been accordingly concerned with the question of what this novel — what any novel — is really saying. Yet here you've written a novel that sacrifices none of its novelistic ambition with the social conflict at its heart. So, as a writer I have to ask: how?
Part of what makes Mairéad such a compelling character is how concrete her worldview is: relationships are largely transactional; vulnerability is weakness. It presents most acutely in her repression of thought, of feeling, of herself.
'He wouldn't stop asking personal questions. Why does he need to know what my parents do?' If a fella wants to know about the neighbour on his right, my dad would say, he'll ask the neighbour on his left. You did not share information, you concealed it. In case it was used against you.
The complicating factor is, as you point out, that she isn't entirely wrong. In the theatre, for instance, she is not free to say or do what she wants. There are power dynamics at play to do with gender but also experience and seniority. But also that nobody she works with sees the world in quite that same way. She is often appalled at the brash and open behaviour of her coworkers and friends. Especially early on, she sees this freedom as vulgar rather than liberating. The novel seems — to me, at least — to make the argument this has a lot to do with her Irishness. Mairéad is an Irishwoman living in London in the early 2000's with all of the alienation that entails. And that otherness is rendered beautifully and so distinctly from the scenes set in Ireland, after Mairéad comes back home. I don't know that I've ever read a novel that so clearly demonstrates the cultural differences (subtle and not so subtle) between the Irish and British, certainly not so closely juxtaposed. Did you find it challenging to get into the rhythm of London speech and mannerisms? Did you always know that she would come back to Ireland?
James
James,
These are turbulent times, as you say. Earlier this year, I read Omar El Akkad's One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. It's an extraordinary work of nonfiction, a profound act of articulation and speaking up. I mention it because it has changed my attitude and understanding of things, especially our abuse of language and how difficult it is to find the courage to call a thing what it is and not look away. He asks repeatedly about writing, ‘What is this work we do? What are we good for?’
In the context of the theatre world in The Wardrobe Department, the responsibility for calling out abuse is left to subordinate employees. The reader may already know that reporting workplace bullying or harassment in a precarious work environment means that it will not be stopped, it will get worse, and you will lose your job for speaking up. I think your character RóisÃn in Placeholders experiences something similar in her workplace? When I was researching this aspect of the story, after the #MeToo movement had gone global in 2017, I asked the theatre staff I was interviewing if they had witnessed or encountered bullying. The answer was an emphatic ‘yes’ from everyone. Which means that even if you do speak up, the next job will have the same problems. Allowing organisations to investigate themselves is ineffective. Those organisational structures have both enabled and tolerated bullying. If the current system does not recognise and address how it is being abused, that is the fault of the system. Or it’s possible the system is working exactly as intended and the promises for reform are superficial. We no longer tolerate adults hitting children. We don’t try to see both sides, or tell the child they are also to blame: we stop it. Mairéad has a pivotal moment in the story where she recognises similar patterns of behaviour occurring in her workplace and in her family. She realises that, although she may be the current target, she is not the cause, and says, 'His choice, not my fault.' This revolution in her thoughts is where she begins to turn her focus outwards.
I don't know if my novel is saying anything. It has no answers, only questions. In Hilary Mantel's The Mirror and the Light, her character, Thomas Cromwell, asks another character, 'Who told you this, and how long have you believed it?' It is an excellent question. I don’t know how to answer your question other than to say having the time to develop the story is what made the story.
The distinct parts worried me when I was writing it. There are three sections in the novel, like a three-act play, where you’re asking the reader to leave the world you’ve just introduced and come with you to a new setting. But I knew Mairéad had to go home at some point, if I was going to really engage with the emigrant experience. The separate worlds are only linked through her mind and body and she continues to live a half-life in whichever one she’s just left. I think many of us imagine our parallel life or lives, what would we have become if we’d made different choices at a certain point? Mairéad thinks about this all the time, it’s an essential part of her consciousness, her partitioned state, so I had to represent that. The editor I worked with on the text is English and has better grammar and syntax than I do. For example, I don't know how to use 'shall' in a sentence and I was grateful to be working with someone who did. There is a funeral scene in the Irish section. It's a cliché, in an Irish novel, to have a funeral scene, and I felt it had to earn its place. That's something I worked on, and was still working on, right up to the print deadline.
There is something I should say. I trust the reader to understand what’s not explicitly stated. Mairéad is white, educated, with European citizenship, able to cross borders freely and to work in London, where she is offered access to more opportunity, acceptance and healthcare than in her own country. She’s aware of the casual racism and intolerance in her family. There is a recurring choice between increasing barriers or attempting to recognise what brought them about. If Mairéad chooses to hold on to her anger, she will become more isolated. She is arriving onto the scene long after the story has begun and she has to figure out how to navigate her own way through.
That does not mean forgetting who she is, but she has a chance to create a new space and become more at peace with herself.
Elaine
One true joy of living in Ireland these days is living in a small country densely populated with some of the most talented authors in the world. Which is another way of saying that I hope to make this interview segment a regular part of the semantics newsletter, because it was an absolute pleasure getting to hear more from Elaine about her writing in her own words.
You can find more information about Elaine, including her work and contact information, here.
-JSR
P. S. These photographs are from a London trip in 2023. They were taken with my trusty Olympus XA at The Big Museum of Stolen Stuff. Or, as you might call it, The British Museum.