Eight decades on from coming to live in Kilrush as a young child, Joe Riley has written another book heavily influenced by the West Clare town. Joe is an 84 year old author, originally from Pound Street, Kilrush, Co. Clare now living in Stockport, UK. Joe has dedicated his later years to preserving and reimagining the stories of his hometown through a series of powerful books.
The Quiet Man from Scattery Island is his fourth book, and is in essence a love letter to the town and the area that shaped and made him.
Mr Riley’s other books include two editions of The Ghosts of Kilrush, Life in Kilrush in the 1940s and 50s, and now a fictional story about the town.
After suffering a full-on stroke on his on left-hand-side a year and a half ago, and more recently a terminal cancer diagnosis, the 84-year-old has been told by his surgeon he has just a matter of months to live. Following his stroke, Joe was in intensive care for several days at Liverpool University Hospital and when he came around, all he could do was think about when he was a child in Kilrush.
“When I came out, I used to think about all the places in Kilrush, and in my mind I wandered the lanes and streets, and in my mind I would go out to Cappa and the islands.”
“What I did was I wrote a thriller or a fictional story around that, and one of the things I needed to do to keep my mind alive, was write a book,” he tells The Clare Champion.