Point Of View

This interview is with author Lisa Harding, focusing on her new novel 'The Wildlings', set for release at the end of April 2025. The book is described as dark academia, packed with themes of cruelty, control, and the complex dynamics of friendships. Set in a Trinity College-inspired environment, 'The Wildlings' is projected to be a summer hit. The conversation covers Harding's background, her transition from acting to writing, and her creative journey. Harding shares her memories of college life, her inspirations, and writing processes behind 'The Wildlings', along with her experiences in the difficult industries of acting and writing. A passage from the novel is read, exposing its rich and intense storytelling. The script concludes with upcoming events and Harding's thoughts on her literary career and future works.

Victoria Kennefick grew up in Cork and lives in Kerry. Her debut collection, Eat or We Both Starve (Carcanet Press, 2021), won the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize and the Dalkey Book Festival Emerging Writer of the Year Award. It was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Costa Poetry Book Award, Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, and the Butler Literary Prize. She was the UCD/Arts Council of Ireland Writer-in-Residence 2023 and Poet-in-Residence at the Yeats Society Sligo 2022-2024. Victoria reads from her work and reads my favourite Paris Syndrome, a recreation of a lover's wekend in Paris with an undercurrent thrum of the erotic and insouciant naughtiness..

Carlo Gebler has written many novels, along with short stories, plays, memoirs, essays, reviews, biographies and works of narrative history.  As the son of the grande dame of Irish letters Edna O Brien and the writer Ernest Gebler , Carlo has  impeccable literary pedigree, as a lecturer in Trinity College Dublin he has opened the windows of wonder to a legion of students by imparting his knowledge, he discusses,À la recherche du temps perdu by Proust, as being a transformative reading experience .If the past is another country – what happens when we revisit it, one day a year? Carlo Gébler has done just that. Here is the story of Ireland – from the tail end of the Troubles to the Good Friday agreement, to the glory days of the Celtic Tiger to the recession to Brexit and on to the present, where, it appears, everything we thought we could take for granted is no longer a given. Drawing from journals he has kept for over four decades, Gébler stitches together days of his life into something bigger than his own lived experiences – a vivid patchwork history of the island over thirty-five years, capturing those sweeping changes in sharp, funny, slantwise pieces that will prompt readers to reflect on the strange process of how we got here. This intelligent and affectionate compilation, written in Gébler's sparkling prose, is a joy. Whether read from beginning to end or dipped into, it will appeal to anyone with even a passing interest in the astonishing evolution of our island.

On this episode of Point of View I talk to Mia Levitin,a London based cultural and literary critic and the author of The Future of Seduction, which looks at the multifaceted ways in which phones and tech have changed romance, Mia reads beautifully from the introductory chapter to give a flavour of the book. She also talks about All Fours by Miranda July, and the changing and empowering depiction of older women in film and lierature. She talks about some of her favourite reads , she reads about 200 books a year as part of her work writing for the Financial Times, the FT magazine among others , and gives superb book recommendations ...

Liz Nugent is a writer of award-winning psychological suspense novels Unravelling Oliver (2014), Lying in Wait (2016), Skin Deep (2018), [Our] Little Cruelties (2020) and Strange Sally Diamond (2023). All five books topped the Irish bestsellers list and Liz has won multiple literary awards. We chat about her first foray into publishing as a child in the comic Bunty, Liz recounts great anecdotes from her visits to literary festivals as well as giving us an insight into the process that creates some brilliant best sellers...

I was so excited to talk to Rachel Cusk this week about her new book Parade , just published by Faber, a novel that surges past the limits of identity, character and plot to render insights about art family, morality and gender, I've been a devotee of Rachel's since 1994 when I devoured Saving Agnes in one sitting ,  and knew I'd found a singular new female writer.Rachel Cusk is the author of Second Place, the Outline trilogy, the memoirs A Life's Work and Aftermath, and several other works of fiction and nonfiction. She is a Guggenheim Fellow and lives in Paris ..

On this episode I talk to Hilda Burke about her career in integrated psychotherapy, her book The Phone Addiction Workbook, how apps becoming "sticky" became lures for our attention, and how we are now mined as data by Big Tech ...

n this episode of Point of View I have the great privilege of talking to Irish writer Nuala O'Connor, who is a prolific novelist, short story writer and poet, her latest and sixth novel 'Seaborne,' based on the life of 18th-century Irish pirate Anne Bonny, about whom much fake, fictional, fantastical stuff was written which gave Nuala  a lot of freedom to invent.'  Nuala has a talent for bringing to the page  with her powerful imagination the lives of  maverick women , in Miss Emily that of Emily Dickinson, in Nora published in 2022 she conjures in sensuous and resonant prose the definitive portrait of Nora Barnacle, the strong , indomitable, passionate wife and muse of James Joyce , named one of the best books of historical fiction by the New York Times, Nuala also talks openly about her recent diagnosis with autism and how it has provided clarity and self compassion and a sense of calm and joy..  inhale that sea air and prepare to voyage with Nuala as she reads from Seaborne ..

In this episode of Point of View, Jennifer Egan eloquently discusses her work and her process, she is the master of Point of View in the novel, transending conventional methods of story telling, serialising story telling, and using devices in the novel to show multiple points of view, a chat that ranges from the Sopranos to Emily Dickinson, a must listen for all lovers of fiction of all genres....

In this episode Daragh talks about his acting career, which took him from Limerick to London, Los Angeles and Yalta, the making of Withnail and I and working with Marlon Brando in West Cork...

On this week's episode of Point of View with me Anne O Neill, I talk to Daragh O Malley the  Irish actor, director, and producer. O'Malley is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Patrick Harper in the series Sharpe (1993–2009) starring with Sean Bean although O'Malley has appeared in a number of other films, major television shows, and stage productions throughout his career in the UK and in the US.My own favourite being his appearance in the cult classic Withnail and I starring Richard E Grant  and Paul McGann, where Daragh plays the Irishman in the pub who utters "Perfumed Ponce" and intimidates Withnail and Marwood ,a moment now immortalised in gifs and on youtube , Daragh is a man of many stories , he is the son of Donagh O Malley. the Irish T.D who brought in free education, a game changer for this nation and his mother was the dark haired beauty from Dingle who inspired Patrick Kavanagh to write Raglan Road among other poems, in Part one of this chat we talk about his parents and their influence on Irish life and culture

Caroline Magennis joins me to discuss her new book Harpy:A Manifesto for Childfree Women, she is so refreshingly honest and humourous in her discussion on this devisive subject . Vogue magazine's rave review..'Amid a flood of sensationalist headlines about declining birth rates, Caroline Magennis's Harpy: A Manifesto for Childfree Women (Icon Books, £19) is a tonic: a tongue-in-cheek manual for dealing with Spanish Inquisition-style questioning about saying pass to procreation and building an enriching life beyond the nuclear family, with references to everything from Prime Suspect to Sheila Heti's Motherhood.'