Living In The Moment

Andrew Meehan's compelling novel explores the fragile lines between truth, love and loyalty in later life

- by DAWN GEDDES

GLASGOW-BASED writer Andrew Meehan examines love in later life in his new novel, Best Friends. Hailed as Normal People for pensioners, Best Friends is cornering a neglected part of the book market. The author, who is the former head of development at the Irish Film Board, says it took him a while to find his feet as a novelist.

"Becoming a novelist happened quite late in life for me," he explains. "I didn't write a word of prose until I was in my late 30s. I was an experienced script editor before that. I started to write prose literally as an exercise in my flat in Galway, Ireland, where I was living at the time. I found the act of writing prose very, very different to screen-writing – no disrespect to screen-writing, which I'm still involved in occasionally. But I found that prose writing had a very different physical energy. I felt tired in a different way. I felt fulfilled in a different way. It felt like a more complete experience to me."

The novelist's first book, One Star Awake, was published in 2017.

"I was well into my 40s when that first book got published, so I was a late starter. I didn't know you could be a writer when I was growing up. I didn't know you were allowed. If you grow up in Ireland and you go into a pub, there are posters on the walls, usually of men like James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and George Bernard Shaw. I'd see a poster and I'd think: they're the people in the museum. I can't do what they do. I'm part of the generation that maybe didn't have that sense of confidence or that sense of possibility, so it took me a while to figure out. It took me a while to realise that maybe I could do it."

Andrew explains that his latest work came about quite unexpectedly.