Books: Duo behind 'Aisling' series to visit Cork as they publish new novel 

Just like the main characters in their new book, authors Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen met in college and quickly moved in together.

They spent a summer in the USA in the early noughties – the precise setting and era where much of the novel’s action happens.

Hopefully, however, this is where the line is drawn between fiction and reality, as OurDeadly Summer opens with the protagonists standing over a dead body. “I think we’re going to be fighting the murder allegations,” jokes Sarah.

She and Emer are no strangers to mining their personal lives for material. “We merge a lot of our experiences or shared experiences.”

Their iconic book series, Oh My God, What A Complete Aisling, started life in a flat shared by the two friends when they were studying media at Ballyfermot College of Further Education.

Drawing on their own experiences of navigating the ‘Big Smoke’ as young women from rural Ireland, they contemplated the kind of girl who carries her going-out shoes in a Brown Thomas bag, visits Mammy and Daddy “down home” every weekend and dreams of a house with a beautiful utility room.

Sarah and Emer started a Facebook page dedicated to this ‘complete Aisling’ character, which quickly garnered nearly 40,000 members and a book deal. Five best-selling books later, why do they think Aisling was such a resounding success?

“I think Aisling was the type of character that was very under-represented in literature,” reflects Sarah. 

“In books, women tend to have very aspirational lives - they’re often journalists, or they work at glossy magazines or something. Or they’re getting murdered. And Aisling just represented a very average, slightly neurotic everywoman who just tries to be the best friend and best girlfriend and the best daughter and is just keeping everything afloat.

“And people saw themselves in her. As one person said to us once, she is the best of us.”

Emer agrees, and considers how Aisling’s relatability was important from the get-go.

“When we were transitioning Aisling to a book character, we thought about books that we’d loved through the years. It was Marian Keyes’ books, Maeve Binchy. Adrian Mole was definitely an inspiration. We wanted her to be this a very likeable, but believable character, somebody that everybody could love. And even when Aisling is being a dose, or not behaving perfectly, I think she’s still very lovable, which is important to us.”

The Aisling series is known for its humour, while also navigating some serious issues. ‘

Our Deadly Summer strikes a similar balance between light and shade, with laugh-out-loud moments and nostalgic pop culture references nestled amongst a plot full of heart-wrenching dilemmas, dangerous liaisons, and life-altering mistakes.

Did Emer and Sarah find it difficult to make the leap from Aisling to a stand-alone novel?

“It was literally impossible,” declares Sarah with a refreshing frankness. “We had our idea, and then we were like, ‘how can we make this different to an Aisling book?’ We had several false starts where we started writing, and we just ended up writing Aisling. It was a long process to get her out of our heads, but it was a good challenge as well, because Aisling was a very safe space for us for a long time. As writers, it’s nice to push yourselves out of your comfort zone a bit.”

Emer acknowledges the challenges of making a departure from Aisling whilst staying true to their voices as writers.

“Obviously, we didn’t want to write just Aisling with a different name, but we also didn’t want to go so far away from our own style that people who like the Aisling series wouldn’t like the new book. So that was kind of a delicate balance.

“The characters in our new book, while still likeable, I think, with a lot going for them, have more of an edge to them than Aisling does.”

The two main characters in Our Deadly Summer, Laura (a Corkonian – despite not having any specific Cork connections themselves, the writers wanted a sophisticated city girl who was new to college in Dublin) and Dee (from rural Ireland), are in their early forties and recalling the events of a dramatic J1 adventure in New York in summer 2001, the repercussions of which continue to haunt them over 20 years later.

Considering the ubiquity of the J1 experience amongst a generation of Irish youth, it is perhaps surprising how rare it is to see it depicted in fiction.

Sarah and Emer may not have specifically set out to write the first great J1 novel, but it suited their vision, as Emer explains.

“We really wanted to set the book in the early 2000s, and I did a J1 in Long Island in 2001. Sarah didn’t do a J1 in Long Island, but she had spent time the following year visiting a friend who was… So it just felt like a natural place to set it, because writing about a place anywhere abroad that you’ve never been to or have little experience of is challenging. We wanted it to be authentic enough that if you were from Long Island and happened to read the book, you’d be like, ‘yeah, they know what they’re talking about!’”

The natural drama of a J1 experience also has the advantage of heightening the novel’s tension. Sarah notes that Our Deadly Summer reflects on the “sort of fish out of water feeling in college where you’re making friends, everything is happening fast. When you take that experience to another location, outside of the country, people make kind of bad decisions!”

While the book’s protagonists undoubtedly make some questionable decisions, they also find themselves navigating situations that are out of their control.

Consent is a major theme of the novel, and the writers were keen to tackle the issue from both a modern viewpoint and through the lens of the early noughties.

“There are some brilliant conversations happening in the past couple of years around consent here in Ireland. There are some great organisations doing brilliant work,” says Sarah. “But back when we were in our late teens, early twenties, those conversations weren’t really happening. It was standard practice to go on a night out and men would take any opportunity to put a hand on you – I mean, they still do – whether they’re taking you by the waist and moving you around the bar or grabbing you on the dance floor. And in our book, we have the characters as our age now, in their early 40s, looking back on that time and going, ‘God, how much has changed! The things we put up with!’

“Hopefully, women aren’t putting up with them anymore.”

A stand-out theme in this book and across the Aisling series is that of friendship - “always very important in our books”, says Sarah. Best friends as well as co-writers, the pair didn’t immediately plan a new book after the final Aisling novel was published in 2023. “It sounds very obvious now,” Sarah continues, “that we would write another book together, but it took us a while to actually figure that out for ourselves!”

In the intervening years, however, they never actually stopped collaborating – and Aisling lives on. The writers have a Substack where they release original stories about the beloved character and her world every month.

Emer and Sarah definitely plan to continue writing together as well as undertaking solo projects, but for now, the focus is on Our Deadly Summer. They will launch their new book in Cork at Dubray Books on the evening of Thursday, May 28, and will return to the Rebel County again for the West Cork Literary Festival in July.

“We’ve had some great times in Cork,” reflects Emer, referring to previous trips to Bantry and Kinsale as “highlights of our literary festival calendar”.

The pair look forward to returning to Cork and sharing their novel with Aisling fans and new readers alike. With plenty of wit and warmth and a plot to keep readers guessing, it’s a safe bet that Our Deadly Summer will appeal to everyone looking for a gripping and twisty holiday read.

• Our Deadly Summer is published by Bloomsbury General. Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen will launch the book at Dubray Books in Cork City on Thursday, May 28 at 6.30pm.
• Follow Aisling’s journey at the Ballygobbard Project on Substack at https://theballygobbardproject.substack.com