Jun 29, 2026 · 55 min · 11 segments
John O’Donnell’s fiction has been published in *Counterparts* (The Stinging Fly Press), *The* *Hennessy Book of Irish Fiction*, *The* *Sunday Tribune*, *The Sunday Independent*, *The Stinging Fly*…
It touches on law in some senses in some of the stories.
I mean, I think some of the settings of them... are usually, some of them are set in the aftermath of something that's just happened.
So the first, you know, if there's a first person account, like if you think of, there's a story in this book called The Shepherdess.
And a shepherdess is a woman who it now appears, when we hear her, it appears that she's been linked to the deaths of a number of newborn babies on a maternity ward in the hospital where she worked as a maternity nurse.
And if you know, in one sense, you know, I don't know if inspired is the right word, but I was struck listening to people talking about the Lucy Letby case where everybody said, well, she's guilty and that's it.
the evidence is somewhat circumstantial, like that she happens to be on duty for each of the nights that one of the nurses died.
But I mean, those statistical links are kind of, in a sense, can be meaningless.
You might also say, well, Liverpool were playing each of the nights that one of those babies died, and therefore it's linked to the fact that Liverpool are playing at home.
So anyway, what I'm saying is that Sometimes you need to explore this a bit more carefully and sometimes you need to hear and not so much hear, but listen to what the the that that person is trying to say.
But it starts with her with her solicitor sitting in, you know, an interview room and the solicitor saying, how do we explain this? How do we explain all this? And it moves on from there.
Yes.
And I think there's also a lovely, you have a way of sort of tapping into kind of a really nice ambiguity about motivation, you know, that even motivations aren't, they're not simple.
It's not, you know, people always ask, what was the motive? And it's so complex.
And, you know, even like inherited behaviours or behaviours that people don't even realise are inherited or inherent.
And, you know, there often are I mean, obviously, there will be some dreadful cases where, you know, there would be people who are inflamed by drugs or by drink or whatever or rage.
But if you look at those kind of situations, there's usually something in the background that has driven them to that.
It touches on law in some senses in some of the stories.
I mean, I think some of the settings of them... are usually, some of them are set in the aftermath of something that's just happened.
So the first, you know, if there's a first person account, like if you think of, there's a story in this book called The Shepherdess.
And a shepherdess is a woman who it now appears, when we hear her, it appears that she's been linked to the deaths of a number of newborn babies on a maternity ward in the hospital where she worked as a maternity nurse.
And if you know, in one sense, you know, I don't know if inspired is the right word, but I was struck listening to people talking about the Lucy Letby case where everybody said, well, she's guilty and that's it.
the evidence is somewhat circumstantial, like that she happens to be on duty for each of the nights that one of the nurses died.
But I mean, those statistical links are kind of, in a sense, can be meaningless.
You might also say, well, Liverpool were playing each of the nights that one of those babies died, and therefore it's linked to the fact that Liverpool are playing at home.
So anyway, what I'm saying is that Sometimes you need to explore this a bit more carefully and sometimes you need to hear and not so much hear, but listen to what the the that that person is trying to say.
But it starts with her with her solicitor sitting in, you know, an interview room and the solicitor saying, how do we explain this? How do we explain all this? And it moves on from there.
Yes.
And I think there's also a lovely, you have a way of sort of tapping into kind of a really nice ambiguity about motivation, you know, that even motivations aren't, they're not simple.
It's not, you know, people always ask, what was the motive? And it's so complex.
And, you know, even like inherited behaviours or behaviours that people don't even realise are inherited or inherent.
And, you know, there often are I mean, obviously, there will be some dreadful cases where, you know, there would be people who are inflamed by drugs or by drink or whatever or rage.
But if you look at those kind of situations, there's usually something in the background that has driven them to that.
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