Write On!’s Azmina Sohail interviews author and journalist Sheila O’Flanagan

There’s something quietly powerful about meeting a woman who’s utterly comfortable in her own skin. Sheila O’Flanagan, dialling in from Spain, appears onscreen with a natural glow: part sunlight, part something else entirely. As we begin to talk, I realise the glow isn’t just from her surroundings. It’s coming from her; a calm confidence which, along with a soft Irish lilt that speaks of her Dublin roots, instantly puts me at ease.

After going through the routine interview housekeeping, I mention Virginia Woolf, and how my respect for her is rooted in her ability to voice the concept of self-discovery that’s front and centre in her novels. I tell Sheila, having read her work – though hers is classed as ‘commercial’ fiction and Virgina’s as ‘literary’ – I can see a link I’d like to explore further.

Unlike Virginia’s fraught, brief, and often dark journey to recognition a century ago, Sheila’s path includes a successful banking career and 30 bestsellers, many on an international stage, spanning three decades. Both, though, draw from personal experience to make the female mindset a focal point of their work. It’s with this in mind I ask how much of herself Sheila includes in her stories. We dive straight into her latest novel, The Honeymoon Affair, featuring 29-year-old Izzy who, rebounding from a failed engagement, enters into a relationship with a much older man.

She chuckles. “It’s a long time since I was that age! But yes, in every character I create, there will be some of my own experiences. I also like using my characters to explore things I haven’t done, to live vicariously.”

She shares that, despite being in a very different place in her late 20s, as she was already in a stable relationship, Izzy’s drive is something she really relates to:

“Where she’s trying to get on in the world, both with her career and her relationships, is probably the part of me reflected in Izzy.”         

Emotional change and what this looks like when we reach a certain age is one of the biggest takeaways from the novel. For women crossing into their 30s or 40s, this can be significant. For example, part of my own evolution as a writer came when, despite having studied fiction for so long, I began to unexpectedly explore non-fiction. I wondered whether Sheila had experienced a similar transition?

“I read mostly male authors when I was younger,” she recalls. “Women were so often written as accessories to men. This pushed me not just to write, which I didn’t feel confident enough to do until my late 30s but also, to start reading more women: Marilyn French, Germaine Greer, Edna O’Brien and Maeve Binchy, for example. It’s thanks to Maeve’s growing popularity around that time that I realised there was a different voice that could be used for writing novels with women at their core. So yes, my reading focus did shift: from male authors to female authors!”  

I’m starting to understand the power behind Sheila’s lasting success. Not only does she know and celebrate her genre, but she’s willing to fight for the ghosts that haunt it. Early women’s writing in the West was plagued with the notion of inferiority; whether it was contending with the ‘Angel in the House’, battling the female body for her mind or the mere act of authorship with a male façade. Bringing it back to her latest book, though Izzy is linked to an emotionally unavailable man, Sheila ensures we face her dilemma head-on. To me, it’s a manoeuvre worthy of the aforementioned Edna O’Brien.

This brings us to a bigger question: Why are certain stories still pigeonholed as ‘commercial’ or ‘women’s’ fiction? Commercial fiction, certainly within academia, is not always considered part of the literary canon which, instead, consists of writers such as Austen, Joyce, Wilde and Shelley. Names you know; names considered ‘worthy.’

When I mention that the absence of commercial fiction from the canon can imply it has nothing of value to offer a reader, Sheila’s riposte is immediate.

“There’s an intellectual snobbery around commercial fiction. We’re made to feel less for enjoying it, especially when it’s written by women.”

I see her point. Stories that explore love, betrayal, family and emotional growth are not lesser. They’re the stuff of life. Her next words resonate even more.

“If Jane Austen was writing now, she’d be given a pink cover. Nobody would have looked at the ‘womeny’ romantic fiction! I feel very strongly that implying one kind of writing is worthy of study, when another is not, is a fallacy.”   

She’s right, of course. We don’t question the validity of Elizabeth Bennet’s response to Darcy or even Jane Eyre’s to Rochester, so why do we do so with their successors? In fact, part of me wonders whether there should still be a literary canon.

To me, what is worthy of canonisation, though, is Sheila’s ability to illustrate the complexities of female friendship. In fact, strong female friendships are a constant in her books. In The Honeymoon Affair, Izzy is supported by her cousin Celeste, while a surprising connection with Charles’s ex-wife, Ariel, challenges her assumptions. In earlier works, such as Dreaming Of A Stranger, friendships also offer a safe harbour during emotional storms.

“Female friendships are really important. In my personal life, I have a small group of friends who I would count on and trust very deeply. I think only other women can know how a woman feels and it’s important to be able to share those things with at least one trusted friend. In my books, these relationships often help women find their strength.”

Friendships and sisterhood can ultimately be healing when experiencing trauma, especially within turbulent relationships. Izzy hadn’t healed before meeting Charles; if she had, it would have changed the course of her story. In her 2008 novel, Bad Behaviour, the resolution is centred around the healing of a friendship; romance is almost secondary. Another example of Sheila never rushing her characters into neat conclusions. Though, as she tells me:

“Letting go is tough. I think part of that is because we women are people pleasers and find it so difficult to say no. That’s the hardest thing for us at any age.”      

With that in mind, I ask what kind of response she’s had in terms of the choices Izzy makes. I laugh when she tells me that younger readers felt she should be with Charles, whereas anyone over 40 said, “Run!” I’m on the side of the older women; wisdom is the daughter of experience, after all.

To me, part of the reason Sheila transcends boundaries and expectations so successfully is because she writes with courage. She has written about abortion, rape and emotional abuse with that same clear-eyed confidence I noticed when she first popped up on my screen. It comes back to being true to what it takes to write as a woman.

“Don’t be afraid of difficult subjects. You’re not judging your characters, you’re understanding them. Keep yourself in the heart of them. Writing,” she adds, “is like therapy. I write because I’m interested in the themes. You won’t please everyone. You might get a one-star review. But you write it anyway, because you want to.”

This sense of quiet defiance runs deep. Sheila began writing while working in finance, grabbing moments on her lunch breaks or in a cold garage. Her message to aspiring writers is simple: “Make time. Give yourself the mental space. You don’t need perfect conditions, you just need commitment.”

We close by talking about legacy, both personal and literary. What would she tell her younger self?

“Don’t tear things up so much. I threw away a lot of early writing because I didn’t think it was good enough. I wish I’d kept it. It would be interesting to look back and see what I was thinking.”

There’s a sense of deep self-reflection here; not regret, exactly, but recognition. Like life, writing is full of repetitions and the wisdom you gather along the way matters.

“I want women to take away this: that we all have inner strength. That we’re allowed to have our own space, our own dreams, our own ambitions and they don’t have to be about relationships.”

Whether you identify with feminist values or not, I think we all need a Sheila O’Flanagan in our lives. She’s the woman Woolf wanted us to be. She is Judith Shakespeare. She is Mary Carmichael. She is the anonymous woman. In a world still quick to dismiss certain stories, especially the quiet ones, Sheila O’Flanagan is a fierce reminder of their strength. She may not be a part of the canon yet but she has a voice and story entirely her own and there is power in that.

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Issue 25, featuring Sheila O’Flanagan, is out now. You will find it in libraries and other outlets. Alternatively, all current and previous editions can be found on our magazines page here. 

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