Author Insight: Ian O'Brien
The story behind the story...
Ian O’Brien shares the story behind his story, Figurines.
Ian, the narrator admits early on, “I am lying to myself, I know.” He is self-aware, yet still goes inside that house. What drew you to writing a character who can see his own complicity so clearly and still fail to act on it?
I’m not sure. I’ve always been drawn to characters with an inner conflict, and flawed characters, I suppose. I’d love to say that it’s a metaphor for something much bigger, that I set out to write about complicity at a time when, with everything going on in the world, how could you not? That we need to ask ourselves how complicit we are as a nation, and how comfortable we are with the horrors taking place, particularly in the Middle East, and this story is tapping into that. But I’m just not that clever. The truth is, it’s based on a true story.
Sylvia never cries until the bedroom scene, and even then we’re not entirely sure — the moment passes quickly. You’ve given her enormous dignity, particularly in that final act of protecting the narrator. Did you always know she would do that, or did it surprise you in the writing?
I knew I wanted her to come across with dignity, which I hope I’ve done. She’s a victim obviously but I wanted to her to appear strong too. The character is based on a real person, a girl who lived round the corner from me when I was growing up. I didn’t really know her but saw her around. She was different. She dressed differently, spoke differently, even her house was different, one of the older houses on the estate. She seemed to belong to a different time. And she drew some unwelcome attention. I remember walking home from school one day and overhearing some kids on the other side of the road saying things to her, hounding her. I could have intervened, but I didn’t.
I think we all like to think that we would. I think at the time I thought ‘Well, at least I’m not saying those things, it’s not me.’ But of course, it is. We’re just as much to blame as the bullies themselves when we don’t do anything about it, aren’t we? But I remember the way she looked at them, with this kind of defiant dignity, it stayed with me forever. She was certainly braver than I was. What happens in the house is fiction but the set up is based on real events, real people. I think lots of us have been in situations like that and like to think we’d do something.
Margaret is first introduced as “Mad Margaret,” a figure of mockery, and slowly becomes someone else entirely. That shift in the clothes, the brush, the lipstick — “these must have belonged to her a long time ago, another Margaret” — is such a quiet, devastating moment. Where did she come from for you?
Again, from real life. When you’re a kid, you look at adults and think they’ve always been the way they are now, standing in front of you, and you don’t give them pasts. That woman from the flats in the big coat, who walks along the street shouting, or the man in the bus station collecting cig dimps, the one your mum tells you not to make eye contact with or take sweets from. You don’t imagine for a minute he was once your age, played the same games, had dreams. You never picture him in love, holding hands behind the allotment sheds. It’s only when you look back as an adult you wonder what histories they had, how they slipped into this way of life. Margaret’s character is an amalgamation of different people I remember on our estate, people who had fallen between the cracks.
The balancing bird — the porcelain figure that bobs and steadies on its stand — appears at a pivotal moment and then echoes in the final image of Sylvia’s moving fingers. Was that a symbol that arrived early in the drafting, or did it find its place later?
It came later. I wrote the story a few years ago and put it to one side. There was something missing and I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then, when my dad was moving flats, we went to help him pack his things. I came across this small porcelain figure on the side in the bedroom. I had bought it for him when I was a kid, from holiday somewhere or maybe a school trip. He loves birds and it was one of those figurines that balances if you rest it on its stand, and looks like it’s flying. It was only a cheap, little thing, but he’d kept it all those years. Ironically, he’d glued the bird in place, probably frightened of losing the base, which took away the whole effect. There was a sadness to that somehow. It was safe but had lost its magic. When I came to rewrite the story, I knew that was the missing piece.
You write the cruelty with real precision — the pantomime of the girls’ “friendship,” the underwear joke, the way laughter functions as a currency in the group. Did writing those scenes require any particular distance, or particular closeness?
I must admit, I felt a bit sick writing those scenes. It brought back just how it is at that age, when you place so much weight on the approval of others and you read so much into everything that everybody does – the way people look at you, talk to you, the way they laugh. How alliances and allegiances can shift suddenly in friendship groups. How one minute you’re in and the next you’re outside looking in. But we’re all seeking approval, in one way or another. Even Max’s character has his vulnerabilities.
The story doesn’t resolve into redemption for the narrator — he did something right at the end, but not enough, and not soon enough. Was that restraint a deliberate choice? What do you hope readers carry away about him?
Yes, I didn’t want him to ‘save the day’ with a big heroic act or go off into the sunset with Sylvia or anything, because life just isn’t like that, is it? But I think there is a degree of redemption, just a glimpse, in that he changes, learns from what happened. I don’t imagine he’d do anything like that again. As Sylvia points out, he’s not ‘one of those boys,’ anymore, if he ever even was to begin with. That shift is important, I think.
I hope the reader forgives him and understands that the kid at the end of your street being a pain in the arse probably doesn’t want to be, he’s probably trying to impress someone, to fit in. It’s a balancing act and they often get it wrong. There are always forces at play that we can’t see, and sometimes the pull towards the dark side of the street is stronger than the pull against. It doesn’t make them bad, just human. Sometimes, we have to wait for them to pull back into the sunlight.
Author: Ian O’Brien is a teacher living in Mid-Wales. His novelette-in-flash ‘What The Fox Brings In Its Jaw’ was published by Retreat West in 2021. His debut novel, ‘Slow The Road Shows’, will be published by Black Bee Books in October, 2026. He’s online @ianobrienwriter