Guiding star – Meg Grehan on making sense of growing up

Author Meg Grehan returns to a much-loved cast for her new novel, and she remains convinced that the verse form helps to make sense of growing up

Meg Grehan is the voice of the trusted confidant you wish you had when you were growing up. Writing novels in verse form, she’s captured many fans because of her ability to express the highs and lows of what it feels like to grow up and to be human.

Her new novel, The Brightest Star returns to a cast of characters readers first met in The Deepest Breath. Now Stevie, Chloe and Andrew are facing fresh challenges with the start of secondary school. Stevie and Chloe are closer than ever – they know they like each other – but Andrew is pulling away from them. Revisiting these characters was not something Grehan had planned, but all that changed when theatre company Treehouse Shakers staged The Deepest Breath in New York a couple of years ago. She loved the production so much she felt she had to continue the characters’ story.

Writing has been a constant for Meg Grehan. First published in her early 20s, a decade on she has five novels under her belt. “I wrote a lot as a child and as a teenager, it was kind of a constant thing,” she says. “When I got to college I just stopped. I didn’t have the time, and it became less of a priority. And then I became agoraphobic.” It was at this point she sat down and wrote her breakthrough book – The Space Between – and the characters and themes helped her deal with what was going on in her own life.

“I’m much, much better now,” she says. “I am not resentful about it. It’s because of that I wrote my first book about an agoraphobic character.” She is mindful, though, about how she discusses writing’s impact on her own recovery. “I try to be careful talking about it because I don’t want ever to imply writing can replace therapy, she says. “But it can help you figure things out. If I can give a problem I have to one of my characters and help them work it out, and have empathy for them, it helps me have empathy for myself.”

“Poetry, when you’re writing it, you write in the breath and in the pause, so it really guides you”

Grehan addressed her fears writing the book, and then she faced them down getting it published. “The first time I left my house was when I got the email saying that Little Island wanted to publish The Space Between,” she says. “Oh, it was massive! I had to go from Donegal – from the tippy top of the country – to Dublin.”

Success, awards and a big international audience followed. Meg Grehan has clocked up five novels now. Writing comes naturally, a process she describes as “getting it out of your head”. Verse also comes naturally – partly because of how she created her first novel. “I was alone a lot, and I was trying to write this book about mental health, as they all are, and it felt like a lie to have so many words.”

It felt a completely natural form, but then she has always adored poetry. “Our lives have lots of poetry from when we’re little – picture books are poetry; nursery rhymes are poetry. We sing lullabies – is that not a poem? There’s a rhythm to life when you’re a kid.” Echoes of that comforting rhythm are present in her work. “Poetry, when you’re writing it, you write in the breath and in the pause, so it really guides you.” Just as Meg Grehan is guided by breath and pause, so too her young readers. She brings comfort and clarity in describing clearly and calmly the bumpy journey of growing up.