INTRODUCTION

Philomena Nolan is a force to be reckoned with. At five foot six and two hundred forty pounds, her size alone is intimidating. But it is the power of her personality, with her brazen humor and no-nonsense attitude, that really gets people's attention. So how does a woman who appears so strong find herself at the door of the Good Shepherd's convent one night, seeking refuge?

"I feel like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music," Philomena says to Sister Rosaleen, who is eyeing Philo with trepidation. Philomena has always used humor as both a weapon and a shield, and she needs her armor now—she's never felt quite as vulnerable as she does at this moment. But how far can her humor take her this time? Can it get her past the fact that she's walked away from her family, including her five children, hoping for a better life for them all?

Sister Rosaleen does open the door for Philo. She has no idea at the time, however, how Philo will change her life, opening her eyes to a world beyond the church. In fact, because of Philo's insistence on embracing life and moving forward, she has an impact on every individual she meets: Cap and Dina, after feuding for forty years, finally make peace and come together; the once-complacent seniors at the convent's Day Centre are now alive with song and conversation; and the men in her life, who up till now have failed her miserably, all discover there's a price to pay for not treating people with the respect and dignity they deserve. Shaped by the hard-learned lessons of her difficult life, Philo has no time for gossip or greed, regret or self-pity, and won't stand for it in others either.

Through this remarkable character, Peter Sheridan, a well-known memoirist and one of the best-known figures in Irish contemporary theater, explores with humor, poignancy, and light some very dark issues, including domestic violence and sexual abuse, as well as the universal themes of family, love, and forgiveness, all against the backdrop he knows best—Dublin, Ireland. As we travel with Philo on her journey toward redemption, we are reminded that she is indeed extraordinary, but that most of all she is human, with frailties as well as strengths. The way she overcomes her weaknesses is her triumph. The way she sheds pounds along with the demons of her past to gain back her family, her dignity, her life, and her future is our inspiration.

ABOUT PETER SHERIDAN

Peter Sheridan is also the author of 44: Dublin Made Me and 47 Roses. A leading figure in Irish theater, he has served as director of numerous acclaimed theaters in the U.S. and U.K. He is the director of the film Borstal Boy.

A CONVERSATION PETER SHERIDAN

In addition to all of your directing experience, you have had a long and prolific writing career, yet Every Inch of Her is your first novel. Would you talk a bit about how writing a novel differs from writing a memoir or a play? What brought you to this particular project at this point in time?

My first book was a memoir of my childhood. One of the first decisions I had to make was how to limit myself. I could, for example, have started with my parents' marriage and worked through from there. I could have commenced the journey with my first day at school. There were any number of starting points. So the moment or the event at which one chooses to begin the story is very important. It is also very revelatory. Beginnings are endings, and so on.

I chose the start of the 1960s as my launch pad. I was eight years old at that time (born January 8, 1952). Somehow, that decade seemed to encapsulate the story as I wanted to tell it. From eight to eighteen is such a formative time and so many things happened to me, and to my family, during that ten years. So, choosing to start at New Year's Eve, 1959, and ending at New Year's Eve, 1969, provided a convenient time frame.

But it was much more than convenience. On a deeper level, the sixties represented the soul of what the book was about. It was the decade of change and revolution, of possibility and moon travel, of free love and sexual liberation, and much more besides. In Ireland, it was deeply significant. Up until the sixties, the new, independent Ireland was deeply introspective and insular. It was a society dominated by the Church, where fear of the collar (and eternal damnation) still held paternal sway. But the winds of change were blowing and I was part of the generation willingly caught in its slipstream.

The coming of television to Ireland was the first nail in the coffin of monolithic orthodoxy. The new medium, beamed directly into Irish homes from the citadel of paganism—England—struck a deathblow into the heart of provincialism. Thus, my memoir opens with my father erecting the television aerial that will allow us to be part of this new global family. It is the supreme moment of opening out to embrace other influences, of turning away from an imposed insularity and welcoming diversity in all its manifestations.

So that point of departure for 44: Dublin Made Me, gave me my theme. It is the story of the good father who encourages his children into the forest, a fearful place but a terrain that has to be traversed in order to mature. So the world is rebelling and we are being thrown into the crucible of it. As a narrator, my task is to paint the specifics of Dublin in the sixties and to chart my journey through it with the dramatic support of my parents and siblings.

The task of creating a compelling narrative is the same for the novelist and the memoir writer. At every point of the story, you are making choices as the writer. In the case of 44: Dublin Made Me, there are many events and happenings I have left out. Just because they happened to me is not justification enough to include them in the book. If I were to put down chronologically all of the things that happened to me in the sixties, it would run to several thousand pages and you would be extremely bored. I have to distill matters. That is part of the craft. Many times I would bring together events that, in reality, happened far apart. But by so doing, by funnelling, it becomes much more pleasurable to read. Just like a well-told joke, the punch line is in the right place.

So much of writing is about pace and rhythm. Writing a book is like composing a symphony. A play is more like a chamber piece. They all present their own degree of difficulty. It's hard to imagine a decent play that doesn't possess good dialogue. Yet many good films have moderate dialogue, at best. Somehow the personality of a good actor can drive a film. If you love Nicole Kidman, chances are you will not be bored with her washing the dishes for five minutes. Jack Nicholson is one of those people who can make turning the key in the door of his car seem, well, fascinating.

The novel and the memoir: The characters in both, for me, are real. I hate anything where I don't believe the characters. So I'm always struggling to make them as real as they can be. It takes time for the characters in a novel to grow, to start to live inside your head, as it were. When they finally do, they start to converse, to tell you things. I had the experience with Every Inch of Her where I dreamed about them a lot. One morning I woke and made a huge decision about Cap Coyle because he had been with me in my sleep—and he was definite this was the way it had to be. I did not disobey the command.

The story of Every Inch of Her has been with me for twenty years. After two memoirs, I asked myself a simple question—if I had to die next year what book would be my last. It was that book. I wanted to leave Philo behind me. I wanted other people to have her because I love her. I wanted to share her. The book was my medium.

Dublin has held an important place in Irish literature since James Joyce's Ulysses. It is obviously of huge importance to you and plays an essential role in Every Inch of Her. Can you talk about what Dublin means to you, and how it feeds your work/serves as an inspiration? What is it about Dublin that has made it so central to the Irish writer? How does the Dublin of Every Inch of Her compare with the Dublin of your memoirs 44 Dublin Made Me and 47 Roses?

"If Dublin was a woman I'd marry her." I wrote that in the first book and, of course, it's naïve. But it has that "out of the mouth of babes" truth about it. Many people commented on that line. I think they did because the book is so full of love for the city, my city, Dublin. So let me begin with the personal.

My father was immensely proud of his native city. His father, my grandfather Jim, fought in the infamous 1916 Rebellion, the event that directly led to the creation of an independent Ireland. So it was a badge of honor that Dublin led the way. It was the men and women of the capital who struck the first blow. Cork might be the rebel county, and Clare might be the banner county, and Kerry was, of course, the kingdom, but Dublin was, well, unique, and hated by many not lucky enough to live there. Sense of place is terribly important in the Irish psyche. After the potato famine of the nineteenth century (beginning in 1845), many of our people were forced to emigrate and so began the great diaspora. Those who emigrated maintained strong links to the homeland; those who remained carried a great shame for what had befallen them. Much of this manifested in a great hatred toward the British administration in Ireland. The colonizers were blamed for precipitating the famine and for the draconian land laws which saw tenants evicted from their homes. The struggle for the three Fs as they were known—fair rent, free sale, and fixity of tenure—became the dominant political issue of the nineteenth century. As a result, it made land and home ownership central to our very being. Having something to hold on to, a roof or a field for cattle to graze in, became part of the Irish psyche thereafter and unto eternity. Pride of place, starting with the home and extending to the parish, and from there to the county and the country, is more keenly felt in Ireland than anywhere else in the world.

There is little doubt that the beginning of the end of the British Empire, as we know it, started with the Easter Rebellion of 1916. By 1922, Ireland had secured her independence. The British were forced out of the country by a combination of guerrilla warfare and political guile. The lead provided by Ireland was soon taken up by colonies around the world. After centuries in the colonial shadow, or playing the servant at the door as James Joyce called it, we took our rightful place amongst the nations of the world—and bang in the center of that transformation was Dublin. Nothing could have made us prouder.

Dublin is a talking city. Everywhere you go, people will engage you in conversation—the pub, the street, the corner shop, the bus stop—and you will get an opinion on any and every subject under the sun. English as it is spoken in Dublin is a far cry from the language of London, Manchester, or Liverpool. Remember, we inherited these words, they were not of our making. Gaelic was the spoken language of Ireland until it was forced from us by law. In assimilating the new language, however, we did not discard our Gaelic consciousness. We brought a new rhythm and cadence to English. In so doing, we reinvented it for ourselves.

This confluence was very healthy for the language. It invigorated it. Made it go new places unthought and undreamed of. We bent the language to our own needs, and sometimes these needs were quite subversive. Thus our knack of answering a question, not with a reply, but with another question. It is almost as if our brains are still the old Gaelic ones, so that when we're asked something, we compute the information, decide on a response and make a reply in the new language. On a simple level, there is no Gaelic word for "yes" or "no." In Gaelic you would say "it is" or "it isn't." And there are many ways to inflect that which are not available in English. So now we have a problem. The space to prevaricate and procrastinate is no longer available to us. So we have to bend meaning, we have to find inflections to allow us to continue as before. That is why when we say "yes" in Ireland, we sometimes mean "no." We don't like the simple, strong affirmative of the new language. The same is true when we pay compliments. Very often they mean the opposite of what they say. If you call someone a "right fucking whore altogether," the chances are that you mean he's "a great fella."

The system is well understood by the natives and an enduring mystery to all outsiders. It is a fertile environment for the writer, though. Language, and how it is used, was of interest to me from as far back as I can remember. At home, my father in a temper was a wonderful curser. "You're after making a pig's mickey and donkey's arse of that," he'd say if you messed up. On another occasion, he said of a woman he didn't like, "that one eats, pisses, shits, and barely exists." I always thought that was close to Samuel Beckett. I'd bet that the cursing thing is a hangover from the Gaelic. The word for "black people" is daoine gorm, which actually means "blue people." It is just that the word for black, dubh, has such negative connotations, it would never be used to describe another human being. That tells you something of the old Gaelic consciousness.

Humor is endemic in Dublin life. You couldn't live in this city and not encounter it. It is part of who and what we are. It is strong on irony, which is probably a defense against the bad times and we've had plenty of those in our history. It is also big on the "put down" and that comes from being regarded as the "second city of the Empire," a phrase which itself is a put down. From an early age I was aware of the funny and outrageous things people said on our street. I made a mental note of many of them. Bronco Dennis, a neighbor who was given a brand new bungalow out in the suburbs, came back to tell my mother and father how lovely it was. "It's smashing, I don't know myself, everything in it is electric, including the gas." I was standing in the local butcher shop and Mrs. Hogan asked him for a sheep's head. The butcher, Christy Eastwood, put the sheep's head on the counter. "That's not a sheep's head," Mrs. Hogan said. Christy Eastwood looked at it and looked back at Mrs. Hogan. "That's a sheep's head, Mrs. Hogan, two eyes, a nose and a mouth." She wasn't convinced. "That's an awful looking thing," she said. "That's a sheep's head, what more can I do," Christy said. "Well, for a start," Mrs. Hogan said, "you could cut it a bit nearer the arse."

As regards the novel and the memoirs: this is very much the same landscape. The three books are all rooted in the North Wall. As I was writing I had it in my mind that they made a trilogy of place. Maybe it's the North Wall trilogy. I wanted to write and celebrate the parish I was from. I've always loved the place and the people. In the two memoirs, the place is still intact. The family story takes place against the backdrop of a community dependent upon and intimately bound up with the docks and the river. The span of those books is from 1947 until my mother's death in 1999. However, my parents had moved from there in the early eighties, even though spiritually they were still a part of it. With Every Inch of Her, it gave me an opportunity to finish out the story of the North Wall and the destruction, or part destruction, of that landmark community. So I felt that in the novel I was able to complete the cycle and bring the lid down on something that had passed, something that was central to my growing up.

Just an interesting side thought, the Day Centre where much of the action takes place in Every Inch of Her was something my father fund-raised for and helped to set up. I don't make any reference to that in the novel, deliberately. I didn't want the memoirs intruding into Philo's world in that way. However, there is a reference to "44, Sheridan's door," during the game of bingo and that is as far as I dared to go. Interestingly, quite a number of people in Dublin spotted it and pointed it out to me.

Your depiction not only of Philomena but of all the female characters, including Dina and Sylvia, feels so real and deeply rooted. How, as a man, do you get into the heart and soul of a woman so well?

I have always been interested in the female experience. As a child, the rows between my mother and father fascinated me. They also appalled me. I was something of my father's favorite. He made me his special messenger. That meant I was delegated to go on errands he didn't want to do himself. I also helped him out with jobs in and around the house at weekends. I became quite good at mixing cement, sawing timber, climbing ladders, and cleaning the spark plugs in his car. It gave me status and a special place in his affections.

My father could be difficult at times. He was an inveterate gambler and when he lost, someone got the blame. There always had to be a jinx. Sometimes it was me, other times one of my five brothers. Invariably it was Ma. She was his all time Jonah. Throughout most of it, Ma dealt with it comfortably. Da was scathing and had the most vicious tongue. Sometimes it got too much and Ma would explode. The resulting rows could go on for weeks and months. They would start with them not talking and progress to them not going out to the pub together. Then Da might escalate it by refusing her food—a hunger strike, one of his great weapons. Ma might respond by putting him out of the bed and into the single room. And on and on.

Because of my role as his messenger, he often made me his confidant during these rows. I would go to the chip shop and get him food which he would eat secretly in the garage at the back of the house. He might make disparaging comments about Ma. Then he'd warn me about getting involved with mad women and he'd finish off by telling me never to get married. On one level, I felt very adult in these situations. On another level, I felt that I was betraying Ma by listening to him. I felt like a little Judas.

These childhood experiences made me very sensitive to my mother's suffering. I felt for her because I knew what he was like. I knew what it was like to be blamed for horses losing races. I knew the powerlessness of that situation. And the frustration. I knew what it was like to keep silent because to speak out risked releasing the dragon inside him. And yet, by remaining silent, one became complicit in the awful blame game and perpetuated it into the future and beyond.

They say that all relationships are power struggles and that is certainly how it appeared to me as a child. There is no doubt that the war between Ma and Da influenced me greatly, and I still think back to those days when I'm trying to understand the motivation of a wife or a husband in something I'm writing or directing.

One of the great pleasures in my professional career has been devising plays with groups of actors and sometimes even non-actors. That work always focuses in on the lives of the players themselves and the key to good devising is to elicit and draw out material from their own experiences. As an encouragement, I often say to people in those situations that there is nothing in my own past I won't reveal and that is the truth of the matter. If it can serve the work, then it's part of the process.

In an atmosphere of trust, people will reveal their deepest, darkest secrets. And women, if the circumstances are right, are much more forthcoming than men. I have been privileged to work with the most extraordinary women in that way. I am curious by nature so I cut through the veneer to the heart of things. I ask all the awkward questions and, more importantly, I listen. If you don't listen, you don't feel, and without feeling there is no depth, no character.

You've chosen to take on some very difficult subjects, including domestic abuse, child sexual molestation, and obesity, issues that are often hard to confront. Why did you decide to tackle these particular issues, and was it hard to do so?

The book is driven by the character of Philo. It just so happens that all of that stuff—domestic abuse, obesity, child molestation—is part of her character profile. It is in her background so I have no option but to deal with it. And yes, they are difficult subjects. But I never saw them as issues existing out there on their own. Of course, the danger is they could swamp a book, they could feel just too much to load onto one person's shoulders. They could become a litany that tries to win sympathy but ends up producing the direct opposite effect.

Philo is not a victim and doesn't see herself as such. In many ways, when she was swimming around in my head waiting for me to give her life, I thought of her as a female Falstaff. Literally, someone larger than life. Someone gross. A huge person with a big mouth. Crude, over the top but with an enormous heart, her saving grace.

The challenge in writing her was to make her more than the sum of her past. Because of her size, we can't help asking how she got that way. Is it something that happened voluntarily or by design? When I look at an obese person I try to imagine what their parents look like, or their grandparents. Similarly, when I see an overweight father and son, or mother and daughter, I try to work my way inside the heads of those people and imagine how they see themselves. Nobody wants to be obese, so what promotes it? Do obese people see themselves as skinnier than they actually are? Does a fat parent rear a fat child out of a perverse form of self-justification? All of this intrigues me. With Philo, I had an opportunity to explore some of these questions.

Philo is fat because food provides her anesthetic to pain. She is not happy with her size so to deflect attention away from that, she's a self-deprecating comedienne. None of that makes her a bad person. She is a good mother yet she has abandoned her children. At one point in the book she says that she should have abandoned them years ago. I love contradiction, I find it rich. It is in that fissure, for me, that the real story resides. I want to push that as far as I can both in terms of the character and of the story. I want to be taken to the edge of experience. I want to look over the cliff and feel dizzy.

I think we blame fat people for being the way they are. Why can't they just eat less, why do they have to make savages of themselves? We have much more sympathy, in my experience, for drug addiction or alcoholism than we do for obesity. It somehow seems very unattractive to be overweight. Our perception of beauty, or the marketing of it, has become more and more anorexic. There is nowhere for fat people to hide, their problem is a public thing. It must be very shaming for them to feel the eyes of people on them, making judgments. So, yes, I very much wanted to take that generalized perception and turn it on its head. Not by trying to make a "nice" fat character, but by making a flawed one, someone who wanted to lose weight but who was struggling with so much else she didn't have the time to put it on her agenda.

Philomena's "final act" at the end of the novel is shocking, reminiscent of the best Greek tragedies. In fact, Philomena's story has many parallels to the Greek myth of Philomela, the voiceless heroine who, in the end, gains her revenge. Similarly dramatic forms of revenge are played out in other literatures, as well. Could you talk about what other works might have informed Every Inch of Her or served partly as inspiration?

On the question of classical antecedents for Philomena: The name is very "old Dublin," in many cases shortened to Philo. I love the sound and the shape of it. In addition, the name is the root of many Greek words, like philosophy, philology, and so on. In that context it means "love." For a while I toyed with the idea of calling the book Philo Means Love. As a description, it fits her to a tee. She is gushing with love, sometimes in the maddest ways. I didn't know the heroine Philomela until it was pointed out to me. But I knew a girl growing up called Philo Melia. Isn't that just so close they had to know of the Greek origin?

As far as other influences are concerned, there are quite a few. As mentioned earlier, Falstaff from Shakespeare's Henry plays. There was a character of a fat woman in Fellini's Amarcord who presents a breast for sucking to the young protagonist of the film. That image of mother supplier has its echoes in Anna Livia, the mythic figure from the river Liffey who supplies Dublin with its requirements of liquid nectar. I saw Philo, imagistically, very much in that tradition of life giver.

Many years ago I read Susie Orbach's book Fat Is a Feminist Issue and her arguments and insights stayed with me. I don't know the current standing of that book but it certainly was groundbreaking when it first appeared. The politics of it were brilliantly observed and it was a major education for me.

I have been inspired by everything that Samuel Beckett wrote. As a young actor I played in Waiting for Godot and Endgame. I also directed Krapp's Last Tape and a one-man show Unless It Goes on Beyond the Grave written by Jim Sheridan, my brother. Later on I progressed to his novels and poetry. Nobody ever made me laugh louder or longer than Beckett in full flow, especially when he pushed character and situations to extremes. There is a wonderful sequence in Molloy where the protagonist is trying to communicate with his deaf and aging mother by knocking on her skull. One knock for yes, two for no, three for hello, four for money, five for good-bye. So, to indoctrinate her, he pounds with his fist on her skull. On the four knocks, he sticks a banknote under her nose, determined that she should not confuse four with anything other than money. It is, at once, shocking and hilarious, turn and turn about. The sequence was inspired by the author's mother, who was wheelchair bound and catatonic in her later years. It takes real bravery to draw on personal experience and use it that way. It provided an inspiration and a permission for me in relation to the book in general, and Dina in particular.

I have always described Every Inch of Her as a "black comedy." The great Irish novelist, Flann O'Brien, is the master of the genre. His books, At Swim Two Birds and The Dalkey Archive are among my favorites. They are a wonderful piss-take on all aspects of Irish society, zany and idiosyncratic.

We are often advised to forgive rather than seek revenge, as revenge can be a dangerous path to tread, yet here, Philomena finds freedom through her choice. Could you comment on the "modern" idea of revenge (if there is such a thing) and whether or not you think there is value in its pursuit? Do you think Philo could have found any other form of redemption?

I think we have to clarify revenge. Philo's action at the end of the book is grotesque. Her obesity is also grotesque. The two things are intimately bound up together. So it is an exchange. You presented me with this burden, I've carried it all my life, now it is your turn to take it back and do with it what you will.

Not everybody, of course, is presented with such a choice. Many people live with abuse (of one kind or another) and never get the opportunity to face their perpetrator. The good thing about writing fiction is that I can play God and make it happen. But many people lead quietly desperate lives and never move on, never get to tackle their issues, either at a spiritual, religious, or psychological level. Some do, however, and the key, it seems, is forgiveness. Forgiving the abuser, for his/her part, and forgiving ourselves, for our complicity and/or our naivety. Without forgiveness we carry the hurt, and as long as we do we keep ourselves locked up in an emotional prison with no release date. As Bono of U2 so succinctly put it in a recent song, "you get stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it."

When Christ appeared among us we were stuck in the moment of "blood revenge." That is why he instructed us to forgive our enemies. An eye for an eye is a philosophy that ultimately blinds us all. In the conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, we have seen where the ideology of revenge leads us to. It cements division, builds high walls, propagates the ghetto, and makes reconciliation impossible. We submit to the will of the tribe. Killing becomes a circular loop from which there is no escape or respite. We mourn when one of ours bites the dust and we cheer when it's one of theirs. Yes, revenge may be sweet but it makes stones of our hearts.

I recently met a young man from Albania, Jeton. He came to Ireland when he was fifteen as an unattached minor. On arrival he was arrested and placed in detention. He had no English but spoke a little Italian. Through an interpreter they told him he would have to go home to Albania. He explained that his mother had been murdered when he was four years old and now that he was approaching eighteen, he would be obliged, under the ancient law of his country, to avenge her death. He could kill a member of the offending family, indeed it was expected of him, and no action would be taken against him. The only way for him to escape, to break the cycle of this blood feud, was to leave his homeland for good. He spent four years learning Italian and then he was dispatched, on a boat, by his father across the Adriatic Sea. His father wept and told him never to come home or he would have blood on his hands.

Jeton's personal salvation was gained at a very high price. By his action, there is a young man in Albania enjoying his life who would otherwise be dead. But to achieve that, Jeton had to abandon his family, had to turn his back on his father and come to Ireland. He broke the cycle of revenge and paid a very heavy price. But he sleeps easy in his bed at night. That is the thing he cherishes more than anything else. He has been joined in Ireland by his sister, her husband, and his little nephew, Akir. If Jeton changed his mind and took his revenge, then Akir would be a possible target for the other side. He cannot do that to an innocent child.

By the end of the book, Philo's redemption is not complete. She has taken a major first step by taking responsibility for her fat. The link between her size and her abuse has been firmly made and now that it is a secret no more, she has the possibility of recovery. But she has a long way to go. She cannot continue to pour food down her gullet every time she wants to have a snooze; she has got to put a stop to all of her comfort eating; she has to try and reestablish some semblance of normality with the children, some form of routine and discipline; and she has to grieve for her mother, Sylvia, and forgive her father, Jack. Philo has glimpsed the top of the mountain, now she has to put on her walking boots and get there.

The Catholic Church is a powerful force in Irish life. As you were writing the novel, did you think of Philo as a religious woman? How would you describe Philo's relationship with the Church or with God? The convent clearly provides Philo the physical shelter she seeks, but would you reflect on the degree to which the nuns provide spiritual sanctuary, as well? Do you think Sister Rosaleen would have approved of Philo's actions at the end of the novel? Would Philo care whether or not she did?

The first distinction I would make is that between "religion" and "spirituality." The nuns are living the religious life in the convent but Philo feels much more spiritually alive to me. As soon as she encounters hypocrisy, she confronts it. She reminds me of Jesus in the temple when he found the merchants selling their wares—he lost his cool. The same with the Pharisees and their narrow interpretation of scripture. You can't apply principles in a mean spirited way and think that you are close to God.

Philo berates the residents of the Day Centre for the way they exclude the more vulnerable ones among them. Sister Rosaleen has been observing the same behavior, day in and day out and keeping her mouth shut. Philo may not know much about canon law, but she knows lack of charity when she sees it and is not afraid to call it by its name.

The Catholic Church in Ireland has been very good at protecting the institution. In doing so, however, it has lost its way spiritually. In the recent sex abuse scandals, they showed an appalling lack of sensitivity to the victims of clerical pedophiles. They chose to hide behind lawyers rather than accept responsibility and minister to those who felt betrayed and humiliated.

The Church is in crisis and the convent of the Good Shepherd reflects that. Until Philo arrives, they seem quite happy with things the way they are. Yet the very fabric of this community is about to be torn down. The nuns seem oblivious to the implications of this until Philo lights a fire under them all. This stasis reflects an inability to change with the times, to adapt to new circumstances and new challenges. At all times the response is to repeat what has gone before; to serve up old and tired formulas that are past their expiration dates.

Philo's dynamism reflects the possibility of renewal. Through her we have the community raise their voices in song. Who's to say that God is not listening more than if they were singing hymns in church? At one point, Sister Rosaleen suggests they say the rosary but she is rightfully ignored—it feels like very stale bread, indeed. No, there is much more spiritual meaning and communal grace in a decent game of bingo (played for prizes, of course).

The convent is still a citadel of repression, despite the advances of feminism. On the religious front, the nuns still cannot celebrate the mass and are dependent on the daily visit of the priest (no matter that he looks like Buddy Holly). It's as if that hallowed spot at the altar, where the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Our Lord, is off limits, to remind them of their subjugation to men. But Philo, who has battled in the real world of chauvinism, doesn't share in that inferiority. It is that defiant aura that attracts Sister Rosaleen to Philo and provides her with a glimpse of life beyond repression.

The men and women of the Day Center are equally paralyzed by this sexual repression. It trickles down from on high and envelops them. They are helpless to do anything about it until Philo arrives. The game of Blind Date is the catalyst that unleashes new energy. It brings together Dina and Cap who have been sworn enemies for over forty years. It is Philo's vulgarity that allows this expression of love to take place. Like the old pagan fertility rites, she ministers to the lovers and makes it comfortable for them to be, and to be seen as, sexual beings. By so doing, Philo has confronted the taboo of age and sexuality. In the medieval church in Ireland, the walls were decorated with fertility goddesses known as Sheela-na-Gigs. The figures depicted females holding apart the vaginal lips to display their vulvas. When the Church went conservative after the Council of Trent, the figures were taken down and are now stored in the National Museum of Ireland.

To the congregation of the Good Shepherd, Philo is a Sheela-na-Gig. Early on in the narrative she tells us that gee (Dublin slang for the vagina) is her favorite word in the English language. It is prophetic. By casting her spell on Dina and Cap, she reconnects them to a church where sexual liberation and enjoyment were celebrated. Not just that, but the union of these two binds the community together in a way that hasn't been experienced for a very long time. The release of this new pent up energy, poses serious questions about the imminent demise of this dock community. Could it have been saved if they'd woken up earlier to their true potential?

The Church needs to look outward to the Philos of this world. She begins her journey by asking for refuge in the convent. Then she ups the ante and asks to be allowed take vows. It seems ludicrous in the context of her social situation, yes. But Philo is a pioneer and the most spiritual person in the novel. She has the heaviest cross to bear and she carries it with enormous dignity and grace. The nuns are still cocooned from the slings and arrows. Philo wants the same refuge but quickly realizes she cannot divorce herself from the real world. She is a true pioneer and Sister Rosaleen, without knowing why, understand this, too. The only true love she has felt since joining the convent is the love she feels for Philo. Unfortunately, she doesn't know what to do with it and retreats into her shell.

By the book's conclusion, Sister Rosaleen has settled for being a bingo caller. She would love Philo's action in disposing of her fat. She would recognize it as the action of someone trying to heal her past, someone recognizing that the sin wasn't hers but another's, someone reaching out to forgive herself, a spiritual seeker after truth.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. What do you think of Philo's decision to abandon her children, as she later admits she's done? What are the circumstances, if any, that make giving up your children, if only temporarily, an acceptable option? When Philo tries to explain to her mother, Sylvia, her reasons for leaving the children, Philo says, "I have peace of mind. That counts for something." "Others are suffering for your peace of mind," her mother answers (page 183). How do we make the distinction between selfishness and the right to take care of our own needs, even when it means adversely affecting others, including our own children? Is it necessary sometimes to sacrifice a piece of our own happiness for the sake of those we love?
   

2. At first, Philo seems to fit the stereotype of an obese person: she's funny, brazen, and not all that sophisticated. We soon begin to see, however, that her weight is actually a defense against a lot of pain. What is the image of "fat" or obese people in our society today, and has it changed over the years? What is the relationship between our body image and our self-image?
   

3. Peter Sheridan deals with the issue of regret in a very powerful way, especially with the scenario between Cap and Dina. It is an amazing feat that Cap is actually able to right the wrongs of his past and finally get what he's always wanted, which is to be with Dina. Pop psychology usually tells us not to look back, that it only makes us unhappy. Is regret always a destructive force, or could it be a constructive one as well? How much time, if any, do you spend looking back and thinking "if I had only _____-ed"? Is there anything you would like to or could do now to change a piece of your history?
   

4. "Not only had Philo married her father, she was becoming her mother," the author writes on page 88. Why do we seem to repeat the mistakes of our parents? And is there any way for us to avoid this, or is it an inevitable part of life?
   

5. Cap and Gerry's friendship ended in 1951, when the Dublin docks erupted into a full-scale war, and the scabs or "aquanauts" were targeted by angry dockers. Cap and Gerry ended up being on opposite sides of this conflict. Should Cap have supported Gerry (page 33) out of loyalty to their friendship? Perhaps more important, do you think Cap regrets not having supported him, right or wrong as it might have been? How would things have turned out differently if Cap had raised his hand that evening? On page 34 Gerry asks Cap, "Why did you do it?" "I'm a coward, that's why," Cap answers. Is this true? Does Cap even believe this himself? How has Cap changed by the end of the novel?
   

6. It is quite ironic that Dina and Gerry stayed together only because of their mutual hatred of Cap (page 36), but it's the truth that sometimes seemingly incompatible people are drawn together because of a shared enmity toward an external figure. Have you seen this pattern in other novels? in your own life? in the world of politics?
   

7. Food is an important theme in Every Inch of Her: Cap and Dina own competing vegetable shops, Cap brings Dina licorice allsorts for a present, Philo brings assorted candies to her children, Philo uses food to sleep and for comfort, Philo thinks of each of her children as a corresponding food, to name just a few examples. What is the significance of food in your own life, the life of your family, your family traditions?
   

8. The power of words and the power of silence are themes that come up over and over again in the novel. That Tommo's verbal abuse of Philo is more hurtful to her than the physical abuse is in a way surprising ("She just never wanted to be called a fat cunt again," page 98). Do you think a lot of verbal abuse goes on unacknowledged? Do we underestimate the power of words to do harm, as well as good? On page 90, the author writes, "When Tommo erupted, Philo took her dose of digs with dignity and in silence. Because of that, he couldn't seem to keep it up for very long. It protected the children better, too. . . . Dignity and silence. The two words that kept the family together." Then, after Philo has taken her revenge on Sam, Sheridan writes, "She'd stripped him of his power. She'd broken the silence." (page 287). Discuss the way silence may be both a destructive force as well as a necessary component in keeping a family together.
   

9. Do you think Every Inch of Her could be set anywhere, in an American city for instance, or is it a uniquely Irish story?
   

10. On page 90 when Philo learns the devastating news that her son Jack has been arrested for joyriding, she thinks, "Children were supposed to be innocent, but hers were corrupted." By the end of the novel, Jack seems to be on the right track, and Philo is able to reconnect with her children. What do you think the fate of her children will be? Do you think Philo is finally happy with her life and herself?