"PinkNews caught up with Howarth to talk obsession, repression and writing queerness into mid-20th century Ireland... For readers new to your work, how would you pitch the new book in one or two sentences? It's a multi-perspective family drama set in rural Ireland in the 1960s. There's sapphic obsession, repression, a creeping sense of dread and a village that isn't sure what to do with the strange, wounded family who suddenly arrive [there]."
"I gravitate to rural Ireland instinctively. With Sunburn, I was writing the 90s, which is my own landscape. But the 1960s, though only 30 years earlier, required so much excavation. Everything had to be researched, down to what was in the kitchen drawers. I wrote Heap Earth in England, and that distance romanticised the place even more. I binged old (TV station) RTE archives, village fetes, farms, Sunday-best performances, to make sure the village carried that mixture of beauty and threat."
The novel returns to rural Ireland in the 1960s as a gothic, multi-perspective family drama centered on sapphic obsession, repression, and a creeping sense of dread. Detailed historical research reconstructed period specifics from kitchen drawers to RTE archives, village fetes, farms and Sunday-best performances. The physical and social closeness of village life—teacups, curtains and neighbours—creates claustrophobia without overt violence. Writing from England provided a romanticised distance that intensified the landscape's mix of beauty and threat. The title evokes burying desire, shame and history. Tension is achieved through extensive rewriting and layered storytelling rather than melodrama.
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