Monica McInerney

Monica McInerney Photo: Ken Irwin

Grief came with stunning and disorienting force when Monica McInerney's father died 12 years ago. It was as if, the author says, a planet disappeared from the solar system. ''Everything had to change to fill the space. My dad died of cancer and we had a year with him to say goodbye and prepare and yet it shocked me how devastated I was, how it completely changed the landscape of my family. I had no idea that it would hurt so much, that it would physically hurt.''

It was the raw mental anguish of her father's death that the author pressed into service for her 10th novel, The House of Memories, a book that considers the family-wide reverberations of an unthinkable tragedy. The House of Memories is all about ''what ifs'', how life can pivot on a momentary lapse of concentration, how truly tenuous happiness is and how there is never one way to grieve and heal.

Ella Fox, McInerney's central character, tries to outrun the loss of her only child, quitting her home and marriage and isolating herself from her extended family. Attempting to still the grief with the meagre tools of counsellors, she constantly urges herself: Think of something else. Distract. Keep busy.

<em>The House of Memories</em> by Monica McInerney. Michael Joseph, $29.99.

The House of Memories by Monica McInerney. Michael Joseph, $29.99.

She escapes to the ramshackle London home of her eccentric uncle Lucas but banishing the sadness only adds to Ella's buried guilt: if only she had been home, if only her husband Aidan had not been called back to work, if only he had not left her son with Ella's sister. Had Jessica not turned her back for a moment, might Felix never have tumbled to his death?

''The whole book is about grief and guilt and communication and I deliberately wrote it in the three voices, first-person, the diary form, emails and in Aidan's written pieces because everyone is trying to work out how they feel, what do they do, how can they live after all that's happened,'' McInerney says.

To find authentic expression for Ella's grief, McInerney gifted her readers with the tears she shed for her dad. ''Grief is the rawest of human emotions and it is different for everybody who goes through it. Once I opened myself to thinking about that, it seemed to be everywhere. I've been really bowled over by the emails I've been getting from readers; so many people have been through something like this.''

The idea for The House of Memories came when she asked herself after an Irish crime writer's conference, ''What would my greatest fear be?''

The answer was, something happening to her nieces or nephews in her care.

McInerney recalled a picnic on a windswept beach in County Mayo years before, with her 18-month-old niece Mikaella. Mikaella began choking on a piece of orange. McInerney remembers wondering, 'Why has Mikaella gone blue?''' Then there was a rush to action.

''That was my first brush with mortality,'' she says. ''It had a happy ending that day but it might not have. What if I had not turned around? What if I hadn't noticed she was choking?''

Family lies at the heart of McInerney's novels and in The House of Memories the author writes for the first time of a melded family. ''I think my fascination with families fits from being the middle child of seven children,'' she says.

''I could be one of the older ones or the younger ones; it gives you the flexibility in the family structure but it's very easy to sit very still and listen because there's so much happening above and below. I really credit my mum and dad for so many siblings, and writing. I'm sure that's why I do what I do.''

In contrast to her childhood roaming among the hills of the Clare Valley in South Australia in 40-degree heat, home now is a terrace in an inner suburb of Dublin she shares with her Irish husband, John.

In Ireland, McInerney misses the birdsong, the call of magpies; in Australia, she misses Ireland's soft light. ''I love that muffled quality and softness of the landscape and I love the Irish weather,'' she says.

While she'd love to drop in on her mother for a cuppa, Skype and email have brought family to her. Mikaella is all grown up and visiting at Christmas. Ruby, Mikaella's younger sister, emails her aunt ''Mon'' for story ideas, and has written her fourth book this way. McInerney is writing her first children's novel for two other insistent 11-year-old nieces. Who knows, she just might publish.

''I'm never happier than when I'm writing,'' McInerney says. ''I love the whole process of thinking about the characters, what I'm going to do with those characters, where I'm going to put them, how I'm going to twist and turn, how am I going to tell their stories. I have a head full of ideas and families.''

The House of Memories is published by Michael Joseph, $29.99.