On my radar: Nicole Flattery’s cultural highlights
Writer Nicole Flattery was born in Kinnegad, County Westmeath, in 1989. She studied theatre and film at Trinity College Dublin, followed by a master’s in creative writing, and won the White Review short story prize in 2017. Her award-winning short story collection Show Them a Good Time was published in 2019, and her writing has appeared in publications including the Stinging Fly, the Guardian and London Review of Books. Her debut novel, Nothing Special, explores female friendship, fame and identity in 1960s New York; it is published in paperback by Bloomsbury on 28 March.
1. Place
Lough Owel, County Westmeath
This isn’t far from my parent’s house, and I go swimming here often with my mother and sister. It’s very beautiful and there is a great sense of community between the swimmers. I like swimming most in the winter, when it’s cold and it feels like an endurance test. For a brief few seconds, when you first jump in, you don’t think at all. I wish I could do this every day. I didn’t love growing up in rural Ireland when I was a teenager – I thought I was missing out on excitement and glamour, which I definitely was – but now I miss it a lot.
2. Film
One from the Heart (dir Francis Ford Coppola)
I just saw this rerelease: it was goofy, silly and fun but also, probably because it’s Coppola, wildly detailed and sumptuous to watch. It’s about a couple, Frannie (Teri Garr) and Hank (Frederic Forrest), in crisis in Las Vegas. She wants to travel; he wants to settle down. They break up and rebound with other people. Tom Waits does the soundtrack, and everything is highly stylised and surreal. I watch a lot of old films because I think you can learn from them, but also, more superficially, for the clothes. There’s a red dress that Garr wears that I can’t stop thinking about. I’d happily take the broken heart if I could have that dress.
3. Television
Love Is Blind (Netflix)
This is a reality show with the basic premise you meet, fall in love and propose to someone sight unseen. All you have is a couple of conversations through a wall where you talk about spirituality, trauma and what you like to do on the weekends. Then you marry them! There have been six seasons of this now, and it’s safe to conclude love isn’t blind. It’s fascinating to watch the couples emerge and try to reconcile their ideas of romantic love to the reality. Some of them are extremely single-minded, too: even if it’s clear they can’t stand the sight of their partner and want nothing to do with them, they marry them anyway. They’re always saying things like: “I can’t wait to go to bed with you and wake up with you in the morning,” like they’re worried their partner is going to leave in the dead of night, which is exactly what I’d do in that situation. I hope they make 100 seasons.
4. Critic
AS Hamrah
I feel, with the loss of Pitchfork and other publications, long-form criticism is dying slightly, which is a dreadful, terrifying shame. Personally, I love to read it. It makes sense of the world for me. AS Hamrah’s great, playful film criticism book The Earth Dies Streaming is full of insight, wit and voice. You need critics like this, who understand that what we’re watching often amounts to who we are. It also helps if you’re very funny, which he is. His Oscars roundup, which is often only tangentially about the films themselves, is always the best piece of writing about awards season.
5. Tech
I don’t see how you could spend even an hour in Dublin and not see the ruinous impact of the tech industry. We sold the city to these companies and made it impossible for anyone else to live here. I don’t just mean homelessness and outrageous rents, I also mean the lack of imagination and the fact that I sometimes have to drink in prohibitively expensive places called Ye Olde Irish Hardware Shoppe. I’ve a dumb phone a lot of the time now. It’s more social and I like talking to strangers. Leaving the house with a dumb phone is amazing. It’s what I imagine being on the run feels like.
6. Coffee shop
Lilliput Stores, Stoneybatter, Dublin
I’ve been going here for years because I used to work in Lilliput Press, the publishing house nearby, and now it’s only a 10-minute walk from my home. It’s very cosy and they’ve a great selection of food, pastries and wine. They sell excellent honey, too, which I’m addicted to. It’s always my reward after I go to yoga. I actually spend most of the class thinking about what I’m going to get, which probably isn’t helping me achieve enlightenment. Everyone who works there is very friendly and warm, and it’s really worth venturing outside the city for.
