Author Louise O’Neill tells EMMA CONNOLLY why she never reads reviews

AS WELL as being an incredibly talented writer, Clonakilty’s Louise O’Neill is also impossibly polite. She emails to say she’ll be a few minutes late for our phone interview – it’s not her fault, a previous radio interview got delayed.

And at the outset of our chat, she apologises as her mum has just been in touch and asked her to collect a delivery for their butcher shop, in 30 minutes time. You can take the girl out of West Cork etc!

Fortunately, she’s extremely articulate and we cover everything from her gratitude at seeing her latest novel Whatever Happened to Madeline Stone on the shelves, how above all she wanted it to be ‘a banger,’ how she doesn’t read reviews, and more, in record time.

This is her seventh book – but the excitement she felt when she got to hold a copy in her hands was as real as it was for her first novel Only Ever Yours in 2014.

‘Whenever I open it and pull out the final copy it just never gets old. It’s like this incredible feeling, that all the work I’ve done, sitting on my desk every day trying to create this world of characters and for it to make some sort of narrative sense and then to see it in its final form, is always this really satisfying moment, and one I feel really grateful for,’ she said.

Louise is in the middle of a publicity run for the novel and while it can be hectic, again it’s not something she takes for granted.

‘I do feel enormously grateful that people are interested in hearing what I have to say, that they want to listen to me, or have me on their shows, or interview me like this, that’s an enormous privilege.

‘Of course there’s a real differentiation as to who I am in my private life, and who I am when I’m promoting a book and I think I have become a quieter person in terms of a public persona and trying to protect my personal life. I definitely have pulled back in terms of how much I’ve given of myself publicly – but that’s just getting older and learning what it takes for me to feel content in my own life.

‘I was very green when I started writing – my first book was published in 2014 when I was 29 and it wasn’t even that I was incredibly young, I was just very inexperienced  and open and didn’t understand the publishing world as well as I do now. Sometimes I read some of the things I said on Twitter and I think ‘god that was unhinged! what was I thinking!’ That’s just lived experience and hopefully getting a little bit wiser.’

On the advice of her father, well known GAA stalwart and butcher Michael, Louise doesn’t read interviews or listen back to anything she’s done.

‘I was very upset about a bad review I got years ago and my dad said to me, if you’re going to believe the good ones, than you have to believe the bad ones as well so you’re probably better off ignoring all of it and just getting on with your work and I have found that to be incredibly useful advice.

‘It also means that because I’m not reading reviews or interviews, or listening back to whatever I’m done, I feel a lot calmer going through the publication process, and it doesn’t feel as overwhelming perhaps. Otherwise there’s a lot of stuff coming at you from all different angles.’

With her second book of 2026 launching in September, her memoir A Bigger Life, it’s important, she said, to pace herself and preserve her energy.

The latest novel by Louise O’Neill,

Described as a liberating post-break-up memoir, Louise said the research ‘was very exciting, so fun and freeing and it felt like this incredible adventure.’

‘The writing was challenging at times, because you’re really digging deep, it is a personal story, it is my life and I think trying to shape my life into a narrative structure was a new creative challenge.’

Louise says she’s quite ‘diligent and strict when it comes to writing’.

‘I find I’m most creative in the morning and make sure that time is very protected for my creative work. I used to be a 5am person but now I tend to wake at 7am and I do my morning pages which is part of The Artist’s Way, a 12-week programme to unlock creativity. It’s where you take yourself off to a play, a pottery class, or watch a film, something to engage in refilling the creative well. And as part of it, every morning you write down three pages stream of consciousness, and I’ve found it really helpful in terms of my writing.

‘I’m at my desk by around 8am and I’ll work until lunch. When I’m writing that’s as much as I’m able to produce in a day. But if I’m editing I can have 18-hour days so it depends.’

Does she ever fear she’ll hit a wall?

‘Every writer has that fear – what if I wake in the morning and that gift is gone? I’m quite diligent with the things I know will help such as artistic dates, as pretentious as that sounds. I know that engaging with the arts in other ways, like going to a gig in De Barra’s, a play, taking time to read, that refills the creative well for me.’

She has already started work on her next book, but is giving little away.

‘I’m really enjoying it. I think it was David Mitchell gave me that advice when I started writing, to always have something else that you’re working on particularly through the publication process. There’s a part of the brain that needs that creative outlet, even in terms of anxiety, and in terms of self-soothing. Being able to go back to desk and work on something different also reminds me that the important thing is the writing itself and not the publication.’

Right now Louise is splitting her time between Clonakilty and London which she says is ‘a dream.’

‘I love West Cork, being by the beach, swimming, being close to my parents, my sister, my dog Cooper, that’s all brilliant. But it’s great being in London too and the exposure to the arts there. So many of my friends live there so it’s wonderful having a mix of the two.’

Life is good for the 40-year-old. An Post Irish Book Award recently asked the public to choose their favourite award winners over the past 20 years, as a milestone to mark its 20th anniversary celebrations and the list featured Louise’s Asking for It.

‘This is everything that I was hoping for and wishing for and I think the day that I stop feeling excited and grateful for it would be a very sad day,’ said Louise.

• Louise is appearing at the West Cork Literary Festival on Friday July 17th, along with fellow novelist Liz Nugent (tickets €20).