“The book is not set exactly in Dundalk, but it is the same area” – The Irish Times

“I think it’s the best-plotted book I’ve ever written,” Austin Duffy tells me over Zoom as we discuss his new novel, Cross. And it certainly is, because there’s no shortage of violence, action, betrayal, twists and surprises—including inevitable surprises—on the way to its strong ending.

For Duffy, a Howth-based writer who works full-time as a doctor, it’s a bit of a break, as two of his three previous novels – The Night Interns and This Living and Immortal Thing – were inspired by his medical background. His new novel, however, is set in the fictional Irish border town of Cross, a republican stronghold, at the time of the IRA ceasefire of 1994.

Where exactly is Cross? “I’m from Dundalk. The book isn’t set in Dundalk exactly, but it’s the same area. Everyone will think it’s Crossmaglen, and it would be disingenuous of me to deny that, but at the same time it’s a fictionalised version. I wanted to kind of hang out with the humour of that area, its language and geography.”

The members of the Cross community we meet in the book include old-fashioned Marxist Republicans like Francie, who authorizes the murder of a policeman at the beginning of the book, and Handy Byrne, an unpredictable individual even by terrorist standards; the widow Donnelly, who mourns her “missing” son; and Cathy Murphy, a Protestant whose brother is the “son of a trafficker.”

Although this is Duffy’s fourth novel, Cross’s work predates the publication of his debut in 2016. “I came across a notebook recently and the first line is from 2010. I was living in America at the time and thought I would never come home. Maybe it’s age, but I was very attracted to that era (the 1990s) because I was just coming of age then.” Duffy was born in 1974. “We’re coming into our prime!” he laughs when I tell him I’m a year older.

This period, when the IRA ceasefire led slowly and not smoothly to the peace process and the Belfast Agreement, doesn’t seem to have been addressed much in the literature. “I think so too,” says Duffy. “And whatever you read about it, it’s very Belfast-focused. That’s why I thought it was interesting to focus on that area (Cross), because there’s a lot of ambiguity and hard views there, and those people really needed to be brought along for the peace process to succeed. It still blows my mind that it worked.”

“When you write, things come to you because there’s an active process going on in your brain.”

In fact, there is a scene in Cross where a senior republican politician called MOC comes from Belfast to sell the ceasefire to local members and is met with scepticism. (I see MOC as a Gerry Adams character, although Duffy is quick to clarify that there are no characters in Cross based on real people – they are “archetypes”.) As one of the characters puts it: “This is the republican movement. This is who we are. (…) We are smugglers and gangsters. And damned petty criminals.”

Cross is an “anti-ideological” book, says Duffy. “There are ambiguities. If you ask someone who the hero of the book is, they might say Francie because he’s this ideological person, but he wasn’t on the side of peace, he was on the side of violence. And the villain might be the MOC character because he’s devious and you wouldn’t trust him, but he represents the process that led to lasting peace.”

The novel is written in a seductive style, with almost stream-of-consciousness inner monologues alternating with punchy, lively exchanges between the players – hence the welcome humor. Was it fun to write?

“Well, it’s not as fun as hanging out with friends and having a beer, but yeah, it was fun, especially once I got into it. One of my favorite books of all time is The Virgin SuicideS (by Jeffrey Eugenides). I just love that narrative voice, the first person plural. I wanted to write the book the way he wrote it – which is obviously impossible, because this is a masterpiece – but I really wanted to bring in that community aspect. So it changed a little bit.”

As mentioned, Duffy is both a doctor and a writer, and he has a demanding and fulfilling full-time job. (He blames a long work week for the fact that he sometimes finds himself at a loss for words when answering my questions—we’re speaking on a Friday afternoon, and he’s Zooming from a hospital room.) What does writing offer him that medical practice doesn’t?

“I started writing when I moved to New York in 2006. And I’ve been doing it for 18 years now. I do it every day (and) when I don’t do it, I feel… I wouldn’t use the word anxiety, but it’s the feeling like you’ve forgotten something. And I’m not very good at thinking or speaking on the fly, and sometimes I have to write things down before I understand them. I just have to write things, and that’s how I think and analyze. Things come to you when you write because there’s an active process going on in your brain.”

It seems to me that there might be a connection between the doctor and the writer – both are authority figures that we turn to and who tell us things, different kinds of important truths. “I’ve just written about this,” says Duffy. “I was asked to write an essay for The Lancet. And I think there’s a connection. As a doctor, there’s a kind of structure: you might be sitting at a desk, the patient might be in a bed, you might have a stethoscope around your neck, these are props that give orientation to the interaction.

“As an author, you have this narrative voice that you construct, the persona of the narrator. That’s how you can play that role. And what also unites them is empathy. If you’re a doctor surrounded by all these props but you have no empathy, it’s a catastrophic situation. And it’s similar with writing – if you don’t have empathy, the book will be crap, right?”

But he takes issue with my question about whether a doctor – and a cancer doctor like him, who deals with people in extreme life situations – can ever draw on what he sees to put emotion on paper. (Writers are magpies, after all.) “It’s not that simple. I don’t think I’ve ever… something (happens) and I run to my laptop and start typing. It’s almost the other way around. Maybe you’re writing and something comes to mind. Something a salesperson said, or a rudeness or a joke you encounter on the street. It’s a mysterious thing.”

“I started writing when I moved to New York in 2006. And I’ve been doing it for 18 years now. I do it every day.”

Who, I ask, is Duffy reading for pleasure these days – when he has time alongside his two careers? “I’m reading Elena Ferrante at the moment. I love her. I’ve read (The Days of Abandonment) three or four times – such an incredible book, I’ve actually read it through and copied passages, I don’t know how she brings that intensity to it. But I’ve never read the (quartet, starting with My Brilliant Friend) so that’s what I’m doing at the moment. It’s absolutely brilliant. And Jenny Erpenbeck,” whose latest novel Kairos won the International Booker Prize in May.

Duffy also mentions reading Anna Burns’ 2018 Booker Prize-winning novel Milkman. “I thought I’d better read that.” Indeed, there seems to be a kinship between Milkman and Cross – step-siblings, if not full siblings – not just in terms of communities and themes, but also in terms of language, which is often surprising, snappy and musical.

And he tells me that the Writer’s Studio in New York, which was “groundbreaking” for him and taught him about narrative techniques, brought him back to books and writing after he moved to New York, after he had been “distracted” from reading and writing during college.

Had he read a lot at home before? Were there books in the house? “I wouldn’t say I read a lot. But my father always begged me to read. He would stick money on the back of the books and if I got to the end I could have it.” He laughs at the memory. “It never occurred to me to just take the money.”