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Sixty seconds with Tana French...
Tana French is the author of In The Woods and The Likeness. She grew up in Ireland, Italy, the US and Malawi, and has lived in Dublin since 1990. She trained as a professional actress at Trinity College, Dublin, and has worked in theatre, film and voiceover.
RTE: Describe yourself in a sentence?
French: Red-headed, high-octane, stubborn, caffeinated, and lucky.
RTE: What's the one record you'd take to a desert island?
French: Just one?! Tom Waits, Mule Variations. I bet Hold On would sound great turned up to 11 in the middle of a few thousand miles of ocean.
RTE: What did you want to be when you were growing up?
French: I was going to be an archaeologist and discover Troy. Then I found out someone had already done that, so here I am.
RTE: Who's your oldest friend?
French: I moved around so much as a kid that I’m not in the same country as any of my earliest friends. But I recently got back in touch with Kristina, my best friend from when we were seven. We ran wild in Malawi together, doing things our parents didn’t know about.
RTE: If I ruled the world...
French: People who say ‘Between you and I’ would be whacked with foam bats till they swore never to do it again.
RTE: Which book do you wish you'd written?
French: The Poisonwood Bible. It practically blew the top of my head off. I read it in one sitting and had culture shock for days afterwards.
RTE: What makes you angry?
French: Society’s growing dislocation from reality. It’s everywhere: politicians using gibberish to justify mass murder or the violation of civil rights; the attitude that countries are corporations, so profit matters more than freedom or happiness or culture or basic ethics; the idea that ‘celebrity’ is a goal in itself, rather than a possible by-product of actually doing something well . . . I’m not allowed to watch the news because I yell at the TV.
RTE: Name your five dream dinner party guests.
French: I was going to say Shakespeare, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Leonardo da Vinci, Bill Hicks and Joan of Arc ... except that you’d really want one-on-one pub sessions with each of those, plus I’m not sure I can see them all getting along that well. So I’m going to go with my fiancé, my brother and his wife, and my two best friends. I doubt that even Bill Hicks could make me laugh harder than they do.
RTE: Who would you least like to be stuck in a lift with?
French: Paris Hilton. AAAIIIIEEEEE.
RTE: What inspired you to start writing?
French: I blame this on my father, who read me The Wind in the Willows when I was six. I still remember hearing the description of a river as ‘that sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal’ and thinking, WOW. Look what words can DO.
RTE: Where would you most like to live?
French: More or less exactly where I do live: in Dublin, near the sea. I love Dublin and I love being near water, and I’m lucky enough to have both.
RTE: Sum up your latest book in no more than 12 words.
French: Victim is detective’s double, detective goes undercover as victim, identities get blurry.
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