Best and Other Friends: A Creative Essay

With Éilís Ní Dhuibhne’s bildungsroman, The Dancers Dancing, as a point of departure, this creative essay opens with the protagonist Orla, who is somewhat plump and awkward, and her close friendship with the more sophisticated Aisling. They are in their early teens in the novel, which is set in the Donegal Gaeltacht, where they are a part of a group of girls and boys spending a month learning the Irish language and culture including dancing at a céilí. The essay moves on to imagine Orla and her changing friendships as an adult, both briefly as a Masters student in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia and then as an assistant professor at Trinity College. The focus is on Orla’s friendships as an acclaimed writer of fiction. This entails making new friends and colleagues in Ireland’s literary world, but also includes intrigue, inspired by Ní Dhuibhne’s novel Fox, Swallow, Scarecrow and short story ‘A Literary Lunch’. With Orla’s success – and her prominence as a literary critic – comes envy and loss of a friend who used to support her. As an antidote against such intrigue, Orla appreciates her close friendship with Emily, even as she moves abroad, and they are left to communicate online via Skype. Eventually, Orla finds Aisling on Facebook and they reunite in the shelter of old friends from the past.