THE WOMAN IN CHARGE
‘It’s important to explore difficulties – but in a very readable way. These things are part of people’s lives and stories, and I will include them. I load as much on my characters as I think they’re able to take.’
With holiday travel currently an uncertain prospect, armchair travel is an appealing option and The Women Who Ran Away, the latest novel by bestselling Irish author Sheila O’Flanagan, is the perfect staycation read.
It’s the life-affirming story of a road trip through France and Spain taken by two very different women, Deira and Grace. Both women are travelling alone with heavy emotional baggage, and along the way the unlikely pair strike up an acquaintance.
The Women Who Ran Away is Sheila’s 25th novel. What promoted this one? ‘It’s really difficult to know what one thing prompts a book but I’ve travelled that route myself, a couple of times, and I was trying to think who might travel it and what their reasons might be,’ she says – she has a property in Spain and divides her time between it and her house in a Dublin suburb.
‘I like writing about women – so I was thinking who would do it on their own?’ she continues. ‘As I thought about it these two women just came to me. And I thought up their circumstances. Grace came first. I’ve seen a lot of women like her on the ferry trip. So I thought, what about a woman
