Marion Reynolds

Marion Reynolds attended Trinity College, Dublin where she read English Language and Literature. She has an M.A. in Communications from Dublin City University. She was a teacher of English and Drama in Ireland and a lecturer in English Literature and Media Studies in the U.K. Originally from Dublin, she has lived in the UK, the south of Spain and West Cork. She now lives in Wicklow with her husband and has two grown-up children. She has been a regular contributor to Irish newspapers and magazines. Her first novel "A Soldier's Wife" was a joint winner of the Novel Fair 2013, organized by the Irish Writers’ Centre.

Marion says,

" As a child, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents in the house described in my first novel. I was always intrigued by their stories about life in India with the British army at the beginning of the twentieth century, their return to Dublin at a time of great political unrest, my grandfather's experiences as a soldier during WW1 and my grandmother's life as an "allowance wife" during 1916 and the War of Independence. Having read Sebastian Barry's "A Long, Long Way" I was inspired by it and I vowed to write a novel about them someday. “A Soldier’s Wife” is that novel.

The sequel, "Loving and Losing", was published by Poolbeg in July 2020. It follows the fortunes of the grown-up children of Ellen and James in the nineteen-thirties. When I was writing it, I was struck by the similarities between the social problems of the thirties and the present day. There was high unemployment, a shortage of accommodation and high rents.

However, there was a huge contrast between the strict rules of Church and State in areas like sexual issues, gender issues and censorship in the two periods. Like all of us, the Devereux children are searching for love and fulfilment but find obstacles in the rigid rules accepted in Ireland of that time. How they overcome those obstacles makes an absorbing and interesting story.

"Coming Home" published in April 2021, is the third book in the Devereux Family Trilogy which is set during the years just before and during WW2. The family individually face all the difficulties of the war in England, the U.S. and Ireland. They live away from their home in Dublin and all of them dream of coming home.

I enjoy talking to book clubs about my writing experiences and I also facilitate creative writing groups.