South African novelist of ‘The Cleaner’ talks about how feeling ‘on the outside’ helped inspire her Galway-set thriller
Mary Watson had a culture shock when she first moved here. Photo: Frank McGrath
“I was 10 years old in 1985, when a state of emergency was declared in South Africa and it got very heated up and scary, with tanks patrolling the streets and that kind of thing. I wonder sometimes how much damage that caused me,” says Cape Town-born writer Mary Watson, “because I’m quite an anxious person now.”
The theme of how different choices or circumstances can change a life is one that occupies Watson’s imagination. It’s a fascination that probably motivated her to become a writer and it certainly informs her novel, The Cleaner, a psychological revenge thriller set in a salubrious Irish housing development and told from the perspective of the woman who cleans for the residents.
