Latest news with #ThirstTrap
Irish Post
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Post
Ten Mins With...Suzy Crothers
SUZY CROTHERS is a theatre-maker, performer and writer from Belfast. She makes massive hearted multidisciplinary shows that illuminate unheard stories. Her solo show 'Troubled' will be showing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival at Summerhall from July 31 – August 25 and then touring the UK. In 2026, she'll be touring a new show Have a Nice Death which is 'part disco, part wake, part sandwich fest'. She's super happy to have just worked on the just released audiobook of Thirst Trap by Grainne O'Hare, a new writer from Belfast. This week she took time out to talk to The Irish Post... Suzy Crothers What are you up to? Taking my solo theatre show 'Troubled' to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Which piece of music always sends a shiver down your spine? Joga by Bjork. Which writer has most influenced you? Edna O'Brien. What's on your smartphone playlist at the minute? Doechii, the American rapper and singer. Who is your favourite author? George Orwell. What's your favourite film? Casino. What are your Irish roots? Béal Feirste. What is your favourite place in Ireland? Ballycastle, Co. Antrim Which book has really moved you? One Day by David Nicholls. Cried my lamps out. Have you a favourite actor? Andrew Scott is incredible and Sharon Horgan is a Queen. Which living person do you most admire? I'm fortunate to be surrounded by great people so I don't really have one answer, maybe my friend Amy, who is so wise and a mentor to me. In celeb terms, I like Dolly Parton and the work she has done on literacy with all the kids books she gives out. Plus I love Oprah. Which person from the past do you most admire? Audre Lorde, the US writer, philosopher and civil rights activist What would be your motto? I can, I have, I am. Have you a favourite quote from a play or poem that you just like? 'The only ones for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.' - Jack Kerouac What books are on your bedside table at the minute? All Fours - Miranda July Thirst Trap - Grainne O'Hare Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell In terms of inanimate objects, what is your most precious possession? My threadbare childhood teddy - Ted What's the greatest lesson life has taught you? You can. You have. You are. What do you believe in? The kindness of strangers. What do you consider the greatest work of art? The Giants Causeway - nature did a great job there. Who/what is the greatest love of your life? My work. My partner Finbar. Catch Suzy Crothers on July 31st - August 25th - Summerhall, Edinburgh, Sept 10th - Belgrade Coventry and Nov 4th - Sheffield Theatres. Visit
Daily Mirror
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
'Gráinne O'Hare's Thirst Trap is a quintessential millennial coming of age story - and magic to read'
Irish writer Gráinne O'Hare is the next big thing on the literary scene. The Mirror speaks to her about her new literary sensation Thirst Trap, nostalgia, and how to write grief while also remaining funny Irish fiction is having a 'boom'. Step into a bookshop anywhere in the world and you will find at least one Irish writer's book nestled in the bookshelves. Though they are much more likely to be in the front window, facing out to passers by in the street. Irish writers have become a global currency in the literary world, from Colm Toibin's Brooklyn that pulls on the diaspora's heartstrings with longing for the Emerald Isle to Sally Rooney 's works that catalogue love, austerity, and grief in modern Ireland. Now, with news of a recent US bookdeal , there's a new global sensation on the horizon: Belfast writer Gráinne O'Hare with her debut novel Thirst Trap. Ahead of the US deal news breaking, The Mirror spoke to Gráinne about nostalgia for Belfast night life, dark humour, and of course: death. Set in Gráinne's home city of Belfast, Thirst Trap is the story of three friends approaching their thirties, living in a student house they're struggling to admit they no longer love, all the while mourning the death of their friend, Lydia. This may sound all very down-beat, but it's anything but. This novel balances the heartbreak with humour in a way that is reminiscent of Caroline O'Donoghue's The Rachel Incident . Gráinne tells me that the impetus to sit down and write this story began as she moved away from Belfast to Newcastle-upon-Tyne to study for a PhD at Newcastle University. She said she was 'feeling quite homesick and wanting to reconnect with the places that I missed in Belfast, like all the pubs that I missed going out to.' She adds that part of the appeal of writing home was to 'live vicariously through telling stories about women out on the sesh.' A familiar feeling for the homesick - of both Ireland and youth alike. But Thirst Trap is much more than a story solely about necking pints in the pub with your mates; it's a meditation on the millennial condition, where there were high expectations of what life would be, but the reality is not what was promised nor imagined. There's a sense of longing in Thirst Trap for a life that didn't turn out the way it was planned. This feeling will undoubtedly speak to millennials and Gen Z alike, as many people now shell out over a third of their salary to live in rented accommodation, while others move back into their parent's houses. There's been a recent wave of posts on Tiktok where students post nostalgia-heavy posts about their university accommodation and friends, splicing videos of rooms filled with friends drinking and hugging with those of empty rooms, the posters gone, the people long since moved on to their new lives. I got this same nostalgic yearning feeling when I read Thirst Trap. Gráinne said: 'You almost don't realize until it's quite a lot later, that was the last time that I saw this friend who I used to see every day.' For more stories like this subscribe to our weekly newsletter, The Weekly Gulp, for a curated roundup of trending stories, poignant interviews, and viral lifestyle picks from The Mirror's Audience U35 team delivered straight to your inbox. Of this nostalgic feeling, Gráinne adds that 'when you're living with your best friends and you think, 'this is going to go on this forever.' … Then things change and people move out or move away or people get into relationships or they have kids or all kinds of changes that happen in that sort of wave of weddings and babies and significant changes.' This would not be a piece about Thirst Trap nor Irish fiction if it didn't address Irish culture's preoccupation with death. If you have ever met an Irish person even in passing, you will have heard that the best craic happens at a wake, where people visit the deceased in their home ahead of the funeral mass. These events are a time for shared mourning and to celebrate the life of the person who has recently passed. In 2024, Sally Rooney's Intermezzo dropped to international acclaim and bookish hype. In Intermezzo, two brothers are rapt in grief following their father's death. Anne Enright's Booker Prize winning The Gathering , too, explores those living after death, as the title refers to the gathering at a wake. Both Enright's and Rooney's novels are heart-wrenching and vital illuminations on Ireland's living with the dead, long after their last breath. O'Hare brings new light to this heart wrenching topic, and couples it with a blistering wit. It's, in the best way possible, like a wake: all humour and heartbreak. It feels like a breath of fresh air to read about a serious topic - such as the death of a friend - without the piece descending into trauma porn. Gráinne tells me that 'dealing with incredibly bleak situations by making jokes' is something that comes naturally to her. She adds: 'It's just like life is horrible, but we're still having a bit of craic.' Thirst Trap is the quintessential millennial coming of age story: there is bad sex, terrible jobs, stunted opportunities. And the propulsive longing for another life, for something better, all the while pining for the past. It gave me an emotional kicking: the contradictions of wanting to evolve while wanting everything to stay the same. It's magic to read. Help us improve our content by completing the survey below. We'd love to hear from you!
Irish Times
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Gráinne O'Hare on Belfast's literary boom: ‘It's a city of great storytellers'
Tell us about your first novel, Thirst Trap. Thirst Trap is set in my home city of Belfast . It's about three best friends who live in a crumbling house-share together, still grieving the death of the fourth member of their group a year after her passing. The three women are struggling to move on from the home and the life they all shared together in their 20s. Nights spent partying have become a sort of desperate distraction from their losses and their fears about the future. How did the story evolve as you wrote it? Did it surprise you? The novel sort of grew up alongside me. It started as a patchwork of scenes about Belfast women just going out and about their lives in their mid-20s. The characters got older with each fresh draft of the novel, and as they – and I – approached 30, I finally worked out the story I wanted to tell. The novel isn't anywhere near the same one it would have been if I'd finished it when I was 25, and I'm glad. What or who made you want to be a writer? I grew up loving funny writers – Jane Austen and PG Wodehouse , Victoria Wood and French and Saunders. I started writing because I wanted to capture that kind of humour in my own words. Are you conscious of being part of a new wave of Belfast writers such as Michael Magee, Susannah Dickey, Rachel Connolly, Róisín Lanigan, Aimee Walsh, Wendy Erskine, Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin? Aimee Walsh and I actually met doing an MA at Queen's [University] ; we've been great friends for over a decade and it's such a joy to see our names together as part of a Belfast literary boom. Belfast is a city of great storytellers and it's heartening to see not just a proliferation of Belfast novelists, but the variety and multitudes within everyone's work. READ MORE You've been shortlisted for the Francis MacManus Short Story Competition and the Bridport Prize, and twice came in the top three of the Benedict Kiely Short Story Competition. Duchess is great! Can you see common themes emerging? Looking back on all my short stories, a lot of them have themes of female friendship similar to those in my novel. I also find I write a lot more about fertility, pregnancy , and motherhood in short fiction ( Duchess being one example). Tell us about your PhD on 18th-century women's life-writing at Newcastle University. My research is about the ways in which misogynistic tropes were used in British print media to undermine the Methodist church in the 18th century, and the ways in which Methodist women preachers used memoirs, journals and letters as a platform to argue for the legitimacy of their leadership. I'm not a Methodist but these women were so alive on the page that I wanted to dedicate my research to highlighting their lives and voices. I passed my PhD examination in May, which I'm really proud of. I got to fill in 'Dr Gráinne O'Hare' when I was connecting to free wifi in a pub last week. Delighted. You are media editor of Criticks reviews for the British Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies. Any recommendations? The Great is my favourite 18th century-based series, it's so funny and original. Sense and Sensibility (1995) and Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) would be my top film recommendations. Which projects are you working on? Right now, I am working on my second novel. Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage? I did recently fulfil a long-term dream of going to Chatsworth House, which was home to Georgiana Cavendish in the 18th century and Debo Mitford in the 20th, as well as being a possible inspiration for Austen's Pemberley. What is the best writing advice you have heard? I always come back to this advice from Stephen King , when he said, 'sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position'. You are supreme ruler for a day. Which law do you pass or abolish? That's a no-brainer. I would legislate for a free Palestine . Which current book, film and podcast would you recommend? Naomi Booth's latest novel Raw Content is one of the best books I've read this year. A recent film I remember really enjoying was The Outrun – Saoirse Ronan can do no wrong. At the moment I'm enjoying a weekly pop-culture podcast called Everything Is Content. The most remarkable place you have visited? The Greggs Champagne Bar. It opens in Newcastle city centre over the Christmas period, you sit and eat a sausage roll with a knife and fork, and there is a £425 bottle of Cristal on the wine list. I would love to know who is pairing that with their steak bake. Which writers, living or dead, would you invite to your dream dinner party? Aimee Walsh and James Conor Patterson – great writers, great craic. Also Nancy Mitford, Carrie Fisher, Evelyn Waugh and Donna Tartt. The best and worst things about where you live? See above: the Greggs Champagne Bar. No, in all seriousness – Newcastle is a beautiful city and the people are great craic. The worst thing is that the crisps are not as nice as they are in Ireland. The English cannot be trusted with potatoes. A book to make me laugh? Reasons to be Cheerful by Nina Stibbe . A book that might move me to tears? I cried at I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue last year. It's a really funny book but I also found it very touching. Thirst Trap is published by Picador
Irish Examiner
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Beginner's pluck: Belfast-born and Newcastle-based Gráinne O'Hare
Gráinne's mum got told off for teaching her daughter to read before she started school. 'I always adored reading and wanted to write. I started at 12 — writing historical fiction. 'Some of my stories were the length of novels. It was my main hobby.' She continued to write and has been shortlisted for several awards including the Francis MacManus Award, and the Benedict Kiely Short Story Competition. After completing her MA in Belfast, Gráinne temped in offices for a while. Then she moved to Newcastle. I felt homesick, and so far away from my friends in Belfast. 'I started Thirst Trap as a way to live in Belfast vicariously — and to reconnect with it that way. It took a few years.' Meanwhile, she has taken a PhD, finishing her viva a month ago. 'I took it part-time and worked full-time for the city council.' In 2022, Gráinne received a Northern Debut Award from New Writing North. 'I gained mentoring for a year from Naomi Booth. And my agent, Jenny Hewson got in touch.' Who is Gráinne O'Hare? Date/ place of birth: 1993/ Belfast. Education: Fort William Dominican College in Belfast; Queens University, Belfast, English and politics, and MA in English Literature; Newcastle University, PhD in English Literature — focusing on 18th Century Women's Life Writing. Home: Newcastle, for the past eight years. Family: Mother, father, and a younger sister. 'I live with my partner, Jack.' The day job: Administrative work for Newcastle University. In another life: 'When I was young, I wanted to be an astronomer.' Favourite writers: Jane Austen; Nina Stibbe; Caroline O'Donoghue; Naomi Booth; David Nicholls; Irvine Welsh. Second book: 'I'm writing the first draft.' Top tip: 'Don't overthink things, and don't try to perfect things while you're in the process.' Instagram: @spacedolphin_ The debut Thirst Trap Picador, €16.99 Harley, Maggie, Lydia, and Róise have shared a shambolic Belfast house throughout their messy 20s. Then Lydia dies, and nothing feels the same. The one-night stands and wild parties lose their gloss, as guilt and grief damages them all. Can they recover their equilibrium, retain their friendship, and learn to move on? The verdict: Highly-relatable. A brilliant portrayal of grief — and of growing up. Written with humour, hope, and warmth.
Irish Times
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Thirst Trap by Gráinne O'Hare: For fans of well-written absolute riots
Thirst Trap Author : Grainne O'Hare ISBN-13 : 978-1035046195 Publisher : Picador Guideline Price : £16.99 Even in the age of conglomeration – when the average novel features merely as an insignificant line item on the balance sheet of a titanic multinational – publishing remains a noble enterprise. Also, happily, an amusing one. Amusement derives from the fact that publishers have absolutely no idea what people want to read until all at once a particular book sells in droves – at which point commissioning editors scramble to find lots of books just like it, turning the bookshop shelves into a slightly uncanny parade of homogeneous entities, like Andy Warhol's duplicated soup cans. If you liked that, try this! Hence all those YA cover versions of The Hunger Games (The Scorch Trials?); hence David Baldacci's series of thrillers about John Puller, who is in no way a wholly saturated derivative of Lee Child 's Jack Reacher; and so on, ad infinitum. This is a roundabout way of saying that Gráinne O'Hare's debut novel, Thirst Trap, is being insistently marketed in such a way as to appeal to fans of Sally Rooney , Eliza Clark , Naoise Dolan et al. The Dolan readership in particular has been micro-targeted, as they say in marketing seminars: Thirst Trap's cover design is a dead ringer for the cover of Exciting Times ; the jacket copy mentions 'the very best and the very worst', though not the most exciting, 'of times'. READ MORE The problem with all of this isn't that it's cynical. (Actually, like all marketing, it's sort of ingenuous, in that it hopes that people can be persuaded by the straightforward invocation of things that they already like.) The problem is that it tends to efface the individuality of a given novel – which only really matters, of course, when a given novel has some individuality to speak of. Which is to say that while Thirst Trap does share certain qualities with Exciting Times (a generational ambience, a matter-of-fact attitude to queerness, an interest in the between-state of being in your 20s), it is the work of a writer with a distinctive sensibility and with gifts and perceptions of her own. O'Hare has been publishing short fiction in various Irish and UK venues over the last couple of years. A young Belfast writer who now lives in England (where she is pursuing a PhD in 18th-century women's life writing), she has written a novel about what it's like to be a young woman in contemporary Belfast. It's an absolute riot – funny, compassionate, observant and wise, the work of a real writer. A 'thirst trap', for my non-Generation Z (or non-terminally-online) readers, is a sexy picture of oneself, posted online in order to attract attention. In O'Hare's sly usage, however, it might also refer to the experience of being in your late 20s in a contemporary western country, when the culture around you is largely oriented towards 'the sesh' – a world in which crippling hangovers are taken for granted, in which life happens, if it happens at all, in pubs and clubs, and in which a sort of tacit alcoholism underwrites, and undermines, the quest for a meaningful life. O'Hare's present-tense narrative follows three characters, all of them about to hit 30. Maggie, a legal secretary, is gay; she is being strung along by Cate, who calls Maggie when she's drunk. Roise, who works in a 'corporate hellscape', is straight, and fancies Adam, her 'superior' at the bland office where she works. Harley is bisexual, works in a hotel, and pursues self-destruction, or self-obliteration, via cocaine and one-night stands. [ Sally Rooney: 'I enjoy writing about men ... the dangerous charisma of the oppressor class' Opens in new window ] This all sounds very standard-issue but O'Hare attends so closely, so wittily, and so empathetically to every single one of these characters that the events of their lives assume the seismic importance of, precisely, events in life. There is no cynicism or amateurism here – only a nuanced and non-judgmental engagement with character that is the essence of the best fiction. The three women all share a tumbledown rented house. The fourth member of their quartet, Lydia, has been killed in a car crash a year before the action of the novel begins, and lingers as a shaping presence in their lives. Early in the novel, Maggie practises running up and down the stairs of the rented house, but stops when she remembers 'there's rot below'. The rot, of course, is below these young women's lives; the house might be the house of capitalism, though the book doesn't make a big deal of the suggestion – it isn't that sort of novel. It is, rather, the sort of book that involves you skilfully in the thoughts and feelings of persuasive characters. It bounces along, cracking jokes, scarcely putting a foot wrong, except in the (slightly too sentimental) epilogue. It is enormously impressive and fun. As the marketing department might say: if you like good books, try this. Kevin Power is associate professor of literary practice in the School of English, Trinity College Dublin
