In her job as a book buyer Gráinne O’Brien noticed that newer novels for young adults rarely reflected regular family life. Then a teenage character Daisy entered her head and refused to leave until Gráinne told her story. The result is a compelling debut, Solo. JUDY MURPHY hears how it unfolded.

When the latest book in the best-selling Hunger Games series was published last week, Gráinne O’Brien stayed up half the night reading it.

Her job as buyer with Kennys’ Bookshop in Galway City requires her to be fully informed on such matters. And that’s no hardship to the Clare woman, who, next month, will celebrate the launch of her own accomplished young adult novel, Solo.

This compelling story of a struggling teenage girl in a loving Irish family, is a million miles away from Hunger Games.

“The young adult market is kind of strange in that there are big dystopian novels like Hunger Games,” Gráinne observes.

While she’s a fan, “it felt to me that there was less stuff being published that reflects normal life”.

In the early 1980s, Sue Townsend’s brilliant The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole did just that.

Even today, when shoppers are looking for YA books –  especially for boys –  Gráinne finds herself recommending Adrian Mole, because there’s so little else available. And given that Margaret Thatcher was British prime minister when Townsend began writing those books, that speaks volumes.

Gráinne’s own novel is written in blank verse and its central character, Daisy, who is facing into her Leaving Cert, has loving, caring parents and decent older brothers.

But as she turns 18, Daisy is struggling. Her boyfriend has dumped her, her onetime best friend has betrayed her, and although her twin brothers do their best, they’re a double act. She’s a bit of an outsider.

Music has always been her passion – or was until she lost her heart to classmate, David. Now, he has moved on and she cares about nothing, not even music. Her parents do their best, but she’s lost – many adults who recall their own teenage years will empathise with the level of her despair.

A new friendship with the mysterious Flora helps reanimate Daisy, but just when everything seems to be improving, it  falls apart, especially when her father falls ill. This is a life-defining time for Daisy who is very close to her dad.

Gráinne who is from Sixmilebridge in Clare and lives in Limerick City, started writing Solo in early 2023, having had previously written A Limerick Fairytale for younger readers.

As it happens, she’s the youngest of three children, and her dad, Paul, underwent cancer treatment while she was in Leaving Cert.

That experience inspired Gráinne, but Solo is not her story, it’s Daisy’s. And, although she’s fictional, Daisy is a force of nature.

Gráinne had been working on another novel – one for adults – after finishing A Limerick Fairytale. Then Daisy made an entrance.

“I was walking home from choir, and she came along. It sounds a bit woo woo, but that’s how it happened. Daisy needed someone to tell her story. I tried to push her away but it didn’t work.”

Instead, this musically gifted fictional teenager developed into a fully-fledged character, warts and all.

Initially, Daisy played viola but that changed as the story unfolded, because Gráinne wanted the instrument “to be one that’s undervalued”.

And given that almost everyone who attended primary school played tin whistle or recorder, people can relate to it.

“For me, young adult fiction should reflect the world teenagers live in,” says Gráinne, sitting in her office in Kennys’, behind a table piled high with books.

Daisy’s life, with its heartbreak and hope, does reflect that world.

“The first break-up is a big deal and relationships with friends and family is a big deal. These are the years that make us,” Gráinne says.

And it’s during those fragile and vulnerable years, that “society has decided people must sit the Leaving Cert”, she adds of the most stressful exam most of us will ever do.

Pictured: Gráinne O’Brien in Kennys’ Bookshop: ‘Books are my life. Reading them, writing them and selling them.’  PHOTO: JOE O’SHAUGHNESSY.