Kathleen MacMahon: ‘I only read my grandmother Mary Lavin’s work when I became a novelist too’

The bestselling author on the complexity of adult sibling relationships, her new novel The Home Scar and the legacy of her famed grandmother, Mary Lavin

‘I wrote 10 novels in one’: Author Kathleen MacMahon. Photo by Mark Condren

Tanya Sweeney

Kathleen MacMahon was reading a newspaper eight years ago when she saw the story of a submerged or “drowned” forest in Spiddal, predating the formation of Galway Bay. The forest had been revealed by a storm after remaining underwater for almost 8,000 years.