Every writer looks forward to the day their finished book thumps through the letter box between its spanking new covers: the culmination of incalculable time and creative energy. However, almost none will have exerted the same physical effort, determination, and commitment in the writing of the book as Christy Nolan, who has cerebral palsy, has done with The Banyan Tree.
This is Christy's first novel, but his third book; the others have each attracted international attention. For the first time, someone with severe disabilities was able to communicate in words what it felt like to be living in such a place. His book of poems, Dam Burst of Dreams, was published when he was 15. The autobiographical Under the Eye of the Clock won both a category award and the overall prize in the Whitbread Book Awards in 1988. He is now 33.
The Banyan Tree has been 12 years in the writing. Despite all the extraordinary things which computers and technology can now do, none of them has yet been of any practical help to Christy Nolan. He wrote the 374-page Banyan Tree in the same way he had written the other two: aided by his mother Bernadette, who held his head, he picked out words on an electric typewriter letter by letter, using a unicorn-type rubber-tipped spike attached to a headband.
This exceptionally slow process devours time and patience for both writer and helper. In the process of writing The Ban- yan Tree, he wore out two spikes. Wordsmith has never seemed so apt an adjective for any writer; every word had to be forged and physically crafted.
In 1995 Christy moved with his parents from Clontarf to a house in Sutton which has panoramic views of Dublin Bay, where basking seals can be glimpsed from almost every window. Christy Nolan cannot speak, so interviews necessarily follow unconventional routes. He asks for some questions to be faxed to him beforehand, so he has time to type answers before the reporter arrives.
In the Nolans' kitchen, Christy sits in his wheelchair and grins as Bernadette hands over three sheets of answers to six questions, which they have both sat up typing until 10 the previous night. He spent the first six years of his life on the family farm in Mullingar - a seam of experience he mines in the novel, which is largely set on a farm in an imaginary Westmeath village.
I lived on a farm during my formative years. I watched cows being milked, calves fed, pigs ringed, poultry fed, ploughing done, meadows being mowed, hay saved, turf harvested, sheep shorn. I could never take part, all I could do was watch and listen, especially listen, to the woefully lonely sounds of rural Ireland. Those sights and sounds are trapped inside my skull. I can't shake them off.
Is he one of those lucky writers who can earn a living from writing?
The last book was a great success but this book is a departure. I'm hoping it will help to make my living for me for the truth is I'm OK while my parents are alive but the writ- ing is on the wall and I'll need to be able to pay staff in order to . . . see me through my plagued life.
When asked how many drafts the novel went through, he holds out five fingers. "An awful accomplishment," Bernadette says. She wanted him to give up the long hours that turned into long years spent painstakingly at the solid old typewriter. But he never wanted to give up.
Even if I admit it to myself, I'm a manipulator - have to be - so whether she's (Bernadette) on crutches, has to have surgery, is cut up at the death of a loved one, all I am worrying about is myself and how I can use her to once again switch on the machine and support my head while I get on with my writing. It's as cruel as that; the fun is storybook long, but the book is my prize, not hers.
Mother and son have perfected a method of communication, which newcomers can also pick up something of. Looking up means yes. Jerking the head means no. Looking at some specific object in the room signals its significance in something Christy is trying to communicate. And smiling means what smiling always means.
DOES he miss the characters in The Banyan Tree, who were his companions for 12 years? He looks up twice: yes, yes. Is he planning on writing another book? As he looks up, so does Bernadette - heavenwards. "I'll be in a box in the ground before that happens," she says briskly. Then they look at each other silently.
There is much striking imagery and language in the novel. Three random examples: "Victorious morning shinned up over the horizon"; a child's tongue is "frilled with her First Communion host"; and "sausages, tanned by the pan until golden, lay like sleeping piglets back to back and tight together."
Christy Nolan has not written poems for several years, but his poet's sensibility and eye are clearly still with him.
He does have a germinating idea for another novel. Last January, there I was sit- ting in an armchair, relaxing. Suddenly an image flitted across my eyeline - like a ghost it flitted past. Now I'm hooked, the bloody thing won't leave me alone.
Despite the tantalising spectre of a second novel, he would like his next book to be a book of poems. He doesn't have much love now for Dam Burst of Dreams, the book of poems and writings he worked on from the age of 11 to 15, and which marked his astonishing debut. When asked about it, he glances over at the kitchen bin. "That's where he thinks it belongs," Bernadette says.
It's lunchtime, and his sister Yvonne arrives to visit with her two small boys and month-old baby daughter. The eldest boy immediately hides under the convenient shelter of Christy's wheelchair; a favourite den of both boys, who clearly adore their unusual uncle.
In an interview in 1981 Bernadette described Christy's condition as being "gagged and in a straitjacket for life". It was - and is - an accurate description of his physical condition. But Christy Nolan has spoken out. Nobody now could describe his consciousness or sensibility as gagged.
Thomas Kilroy reviews The Banyan Tree: page 9.