Ask the Author: Valerie O’Riordan, Birmingham Mermaid

Valerie O’Riordan brought PANK one of our favorite stories in the August issue–a rather disturbing yet beautiful tale of obsession. Today she talks with us about unhappy endings, Cher, and the senses.

1. This story took us by surprise. Was it difficult to write about something so ugly in such a beautiful way?

The idea for the story came from a photograph I found online – a very exuberant, colourful shot of three Malaysian girls dressed as mermaids and laughing, and being photographed through a huge water tank by some tourists. The story then works through notions of observation, objectification and obsession, and, of course, sexual assault. I didn’t want it to be too gritty and dirty; I wanted to portray something of the unreal beauty and tenderness of the original image – and the narrator’s feelings – whilst also showing the possibilities that can lie underneath that. It was quite tricky!

2. What happens to the girl in the glass after the story ends?

I think she probably goes into therapy and develops a terrible fear of restrictive clothing! She would certainly leave her job and be mistrustful of the men she meets. I don’t think it bodes well for her, sadly; the narrator will survive intact, because all he sees in his actions is love, where as Shona’s experience was brutal and traumatic, and therefore quite debilitating.

3. Even though what happens in this story is quite brutal, you write about this man almost tenderly. He does something horrific and yet we feel for him. We think of it as a love story. Do you?

Yes, I think it is a love story, if a rather twisted one! The narrator loves this girl; he sees his attentions as tender and affectionate; her simple act of smiling at him is a huge emotional moment for him. He wants to connect with her, but he doesn’t know where the lines are drawn. So in the end, after the attack, he’s still waiting; his love is unrequited, and because he doesn’t understand the horror of his actions, it’s quite sad.

4. Which mermaid do you like best—Ariel, The Little Mermaid, Madison in Splash, or Cher in Mermaids?

Oh, Cher in Mermaids, without a doubt! I love that movie. I used to hold my breath in the bath like Christina Ricci, and I really wished my parents would spin a globe and move us to some random destination. Never happened. Bah.

5. You play with light and texture and the senses in this story. Why?

I think the narrator is lacking in emotional understanding and depth. He works very much at a surface level, so these physical details – the fabric on the mermaid costume, the water on her skin, the sparkles in the air – these are elevated beyond any usual levels of meaning to comprise his entire world of love and longing. He works on the same level as those who idolise a person from a movie or a photograph, so the physical details are much more important to him than emotional inference, which he can’t comprehend.

6. Why does the antagonist remain unnamed?

I wanted it to be a first person account, so that the reader could inhabit his world and hopefully empathise with him to a certain degree. The evidence suggests that he isn’t a major player in Shona’s life, or in the workplace at large: nobody ever speaks directly to him or interacts with him beyond a perfunctory level. I wanted to emphasise how alone he is; how he’s entirely caught up in a fantasy relationship with a girl he barely knows. If he was named by anybody, I think that would have placed him more firmly within a community and ruined that spell of isolation.

7. What’s Birmingham like?

Birmingham’s good! It’s one of the bigger cities in England, very multi-cultural, multi-racial, and there’s quite a vibrant arts and music scene, once you know where to look. It suffers from a historical reputation for being quite an industrial and grim town, but there’s been huge regeneration efforts in the past decades, and there’s a lot going on here. I’m originally from Dublin, Ireland, and moving from a capital city to a regional town took a certain amount of adjustment, but there’s been such a huge push from the arts community here to put the city on the cultural map, that it’s quite an exciting place to be.

8. What is the writing community like in England?

It’s a very supportive community, in my rather limited experience! I’m lucky to be a member of an excellent UK-based online writing group; some up-and-coming writers like Tania Hershman and Vanessa Gebbie have passed through its ranks over the years, and it’s been really useful for me in developing my craft. There’s some really good literary festivals, and plenty of emerging novelists in England that are well worth keeping an eye on – Chris Killen, Jenn Ashworth, Ross Raisin – and the short story has a pretty high profile at the moment, with Salt Publishing and Comma Press at the forefront of that. I’ve found the level of advice and support out there to be really positive and encouraging – but of course, with the internet, it’s all so international and blurred anyway. And, naturally, we all love PANK!