Cork author William Wall: 'Bullying is one of the hardest problems for a school to solve'

He advertises on social media. Within a few days, five writers are chosen for his six-month course, which he leads, tutoring the fledgling authors on their work.

Things quickly turn awry. One of the anonymous writers starts drip-feeding Jim book chapters which closely resemble the mysterious death of Jim’s childhood friend, Mattie Langtry, who died, aged 17, in a graveyard on the night of his Leaving Certificate results in 1980. Jim feels hunted. The tension continues to ratchet up in a gripping crime novel that mixes philosophy with detective work.

“At an interview in Italy recently,” says Wall, who alternates between homes near Genoa in Italy, and Cork. "Somebody said a murder mystery runs through all my books some way or another. Actually, it does. There's an element of a mystery, maybe not always a murder, involved in nearly everything I've written.

“Years ago, when I was asked what my influences were, I flippantly replied that ‘I went to college during the period when existentialism was all the rage. My mother was obsessed with Agatha Christie. So my influences would be a mix of existentialism and Agatha Christie.’ It's not a bad description. That fits.”

Writers Anonymous is set in Rally, a fictitious fishing village, resembling Crosshaven or Schull in West Cork. Wall, a novelist and Cork’s first poet laureate, grew up in Whitegate, a fishing village in East Cork. 

He has great fun in the novel bringing to life the world of a coastal village in Cork in 1980, with its mix of bohemia and watchful, small-town Irish ways, set against the backdrop of anxiety over nuclear disaster.

“I don't normally go back in time for my books,” says Wall. “I try to set them as near to the present as possible. This was interesting because it forced me to remember things I’d completely forgotten like the anti-nuclear protests and ‘fear of the bomb’, which resonates well with fear of the pandemic. There was a similar vibe to it – the feeling that in the blink of an eye everything could end.” 

Wall was born in 1955. He remembers the feeling of dread at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. He adds: “Not long afterwards, the Irish government circulated a pamphlet entitled ‘Survival in a Nuclear War’. 

We still have a copy of it. It was an amazing book. It scared the shite out of everybody. Why is the government sending this out? Is an atomic war going to start tomorrow or something? It had followed on the Cuban Missile Crisis. It gave great advice if Ireland was hit by a nuclear bomb like tape up windows, if you could get your hands on enough tape. Lay in a supply of fresh water. Don't go outside for three days.” 

At the heart of Writers Anonymous is the bittersweet relationship between Jim and Mattie. During the day, they’re best friends; at night, Jim, a craven, insecure teenager falls in with a local gang who bully Mattie the outsider, a gentle-natured orphaned boy from the wrong side of the tracks who always has his head in the clouds.

The baiting of Mattie is visceral, which concludes with a fiendish plot twist at the novel’s end. It evokes William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Bullying amongst schoolboys is a subject that Wall, who was a schoolteacher in Cork’s Presentation Brothers College for more than two decades, is familiar with.

“During my time teaching, I saw all aspects of teenage life,” he says. “Bullying is one of the hardest problems for a school to solve, and one of the most difficult things for a teacher to deal with. 

"It’s a huge issue worldwide. When you think about current politics, what is Donald Trump except a schoolyard bully. And Elon Musk is the hanger-on who's too scared to do anything himself, but delights in the cruelty of the other guy. That’s what it is.” 

• Writers Anonymous by William Wall is published on Friday, April 4, by New Island