Output details

Holiday

This collation of stories and chapters have different research imperatives but similar manifestations: they’re all ‘stories’ which aim to explore individuals in conflicts with others, themselves and their environment.

Commissioned by Irish Business Post, Donovan wrote ‘The Review’ for a mass audience. At the heart of its composition is an exploration of Robertson Davies’ statement that one cannot dismiss a literature that appeals to such a large segment of the reading public (this is manifest in the proposed readership of ‘The Review’ (in the hundreds of thousands), as well as the theme of the story itself, whereby an author is challenged by a bad ‘review’). The protagonist and plot are simply rendered, allowing the story to explicitly meditate on its primary concern: the act of ‘reading,’ and the distinctions between ‘literature’ and ‘popular fiction’.

‘The Holiday’ is the first chapter of a novel-in-progress. Set in south east England from September 1939 – November 1940, the novel details a child-kidnapping from the point of view of the kidnapper, who subsequently begins to raise the child. Central to this novel are research questions that address the concerns of behavioural psychologists such as Chomsky and Pinker: Does it matter who raises a child? What does ‘family’ mean (to a child)? To what measure does a child ‘belong’ to their environment?

‘Festus’ is also the first chapter of a novel-in-progress. Research into racial relations is informing this novel, specifically as the novel aims to court controversy in its exploration of the idea that racial boundaries are to be expected during times of prolonged civil crisis. In posing uncomfortable questions about racial division, the novel aims to be both of our zeitgeist and also ‘timeless’ since it is based on a ‘real’ history (of segregation and antagonism) as its occurred from classical to contemporary times.