Louise Kennedy Returns to Roisin: 'Stations' and the Grip of First Love

Irish novelist Louise Kennedy has published Stations, a new novel that returns to Roisin, a character she first wrote in her story "Belladonna." NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer interviewed Kennedy this week about the book, the border, and a cancer diagnosis the author now says is behind her.

Roisin is 15 when we meet her. She has moved from the north of Ireland to the south, practically dragged over the border, friendless and angry. "I thought, because she's isolated and she's an only child, I'd maybe like to give her another chance and give her a friend," Kennedy told NPR. "And that friend is Red."

Red is, in Pfeiffer's framing, the classic good-looking, troubled young man. The novel's core is the all-consuming passion of first love, which Kennedy captures with unnerving ease at nearly 60.

How does she channel a teenager?

Kennedy has two children in their 20s, so their teens weren't long ago. But her real resource was her own misery. "I do remember watching, I think because my own adolescence was so utterly miserable," she said, adding that she watched her children navigate school and thought, "oh, God, if I could do it for you, I would."

The autobiographical overlap is deliberate. Like Roisin, Kennedy left the north of Ireland at 12, at the end of the 1970s, because of the Troubles. One distinction matters to her family: Roisin's father is a former member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (the police force of Northern Ireland), and Kennedy's father, she stressed, is keen for people to know he never was. The Troubles still marked her family — a bar they owned was bombed a couple of times, and her father faced sectarian intimidation at work.

Why accents carry the plot

In the novel, pronunciation marks origin and class — even the name Roisin changes depending on which side of the border says it. When Kennedy arrived in the south, classmates teased her northern accent without mercy. Being a good mimic, she went home one Friday, resolved to change, and returned Monday speaking like everyone else. "Far from them thinking that I was now acceptable, I'd say they probably just thought I was a bit mad," she said. "So that backfired terribly."

What does the novel say about addiction?

Red unravels across the book, and Kennedy tracks his decline through the body: a stye on his left lower lid, crusty lashes, tartar on his lower gums. "I'm really interested in the body," she said. "How we're feeling or what we're doing shows on us in a really kind of physical way."

The book is about love, she said, but also about regret. Roisin wonders if she could have done more. Kennedy has mixed feelings: recovering addicts say nobody can help them until they want to get clean, yet she can't believe people tackle something "all-engulfing" without support. Her verdict: "Maybe the answer is just that we should try, and not expect results, but maybe we should just try."

Pfeiffer praised the prose throughout — a teacher watching a school dance "like a raptor," legs protruding from a mother's coat "like a pair of celery stalks." Kennedy confirmed the celery image is drawn from her own white, skinny adolescent legs.

Is the author well?

The acknowledgments thank an oncologist, and Pfeiffer asked directly. Kennedy had melanoma twice: surgery after a mole "went bananas" in early 2019, then a Stage 4 recurrence in late 2021, treated with roughly two years of immunotherapy. "They worked, which is amazing," she said. Her scans have been clear for a few years, though monitoring continues.

With that health question answered, the more pressing matter for readers is simple: Kennedy, author of Trespasses acclaim, is writing and well. Stations suggests the run continues.