SOURCE: “Jennifer Johnston,” in Ireland in Writing: Interviews with Writers and Academics, edited by Jacqueline Hurtley, Rosa González, Ines Praga, and Esther Aliaga, Rodopi, 1998, pp. 7–19.

In the following interview, Johnston discusses her creative process and the various critical responses to her work.

[González:] Your novels are fairly short, almost novellas. Do you consciously aim at brevity?

[Johnston:] No, I don't. I always say to myself, “Now, this time I'm going to write a long novel,” and it always seems a long idea in my mind, you know, but they come out almost exactly the same length. That seems to be my rhythm, and I believe very strongly that when I've made my point I don't want to embellish it in any way, and I think with very long novels a lot is embellishment, and I don't have any desire to embellish.

At the same time your...