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Life
1952- ; b. Castledermot, Co. Kildare; ed. St. Clement’s College, Limerick, and UCD (English & History); taught at Castledermot Vocational School for six years; became involved in radio and came to Athy to do a community series; trained as radio producer and commissioning editor in RTÉ; joined 2FM; later worked as a producer on Radio One; winner of Winner of Hennessy Award, 1983; Leitrim Guardian Award, 1986; C. Day-Lewis Fiction Award, 1989 and 1990; |
| The Fallen and Other Stories (1993), the winner of The Irish Times First Fiction Award, incls. the caustic tale “A Summer Girl”, considered atypical; Clare (1994), novel on the poet John Clare in a series of overlapping first-person narrative, withholding the poet’s own voice to the last; A Year in Our Lives (1994), 17 stories of mid-lands town; also contrib. Blackstaff Book of Short Stories (Belfast: Blackstaff 1988) [“Post Mortem” and “Fox”]; retired from RTÉ in 2002; issued a life of Ernest Shackleton co-written with Jonathan Shackleton (An Irishman in Antarctica, 2003), emphasising influence of Quaker family tradition in Kildare; |
| issued Things You Should Know (2006), a memoir; adapted his novel on John Clare as My Father's Life, which toured in Ireland; issued The Space Between Us (2009), on a man who suffers the death of an unloved wife, and afterwards to his devastation a much-loved daughter; issued Joseph (2014); short-listed for Irish Fiction Laureate, 2014; a play, Lucinda Sly staged by Mend & Makedo Theatre Co. - for whom he writes, acts and directs - and toured nationally, 2105; still lives in Kildare; has two grown-up children. |
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Works| Novels |
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| Short Stories |
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| Poetry |
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| Memoir |
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| Biography |
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| Miscellaneous |
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Criticism
[Shirley Kelly], ‘Things You Should Know’ [interview-article], in Books Ireland (Nov. 2006), p.247 [recounts childhood experience in a family troubled by his father's drinking and documents his marital breakdown and departure from the family home in Castledermot]; Sue Leonard, review of The Space Between Us, in Books Ireland (Sept. 2009), pp.177-78 [‘I loved the subtlety of MacKenna's writing .... a book to savour, to ponder over and to discuss with others’].
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Commentary
Richard Hayes, review of Clare, and The Fallen and Other Short Stories, in Irish Literary Supplement (Fall 1994), [q.p.]; Clare described as ‘factional’ novel, i.e., fictional account of factual events; John Clare (1793-1864), and insane from 1837; recorded through five narratives, four by women ‘whose lives were shaped by the shadow of John Clare’s anguish, tenderness, and growing insanity’ [quot.], among them his lifelong love Mary Joyce, his wife Patty, his patron Lady Ketterling; his own letter to Mary becomes the fifth narrative; human weakness at the source of his madness never explored; The Fallen, collection of nine stories that won Irish Times ‘First Book’ prize in 1993; called accomplished by uninspired, except for “Absent Children”, a set of three stories working similarly to Clare, concerning the death of a child in a road accident, though never centring on it.
John Dunne, ‘Weird or What?’, review of A Year of Our Lives, along with novels by John Banville and Gaye Shortland, in Books Ireland (April 1995), pp.81-83; p.81.
Danny Morrison, review of A Year of Our Lives, in Fortnight (April 1996), p.37; cites ‘The things we say’; ‘Days’; ‘Still and distant Voices’; and another concern a woman who has got it wrong about the character of the man she fell in love with who was killed at Passchendale [sic]; quotes several of McKenna’s ‘little observations’ [‘Have you ever noticed how easy it is to fall in love but how difficult it is being in love?’; we are always ‘in search of something never found’.]
Derek Hand, brief notice in the course of reviewing Caroline Walsh, ed., Arrows in Flight [... &c.] , in The Irish Times (19 Oct. 2002), p.10 [‘“Maps” captures perfectly the complexities and tensions within the family set-up’; remarks on ‘[h]is narrator’s uncertainty about his own position at the close of the story [...]’
Kim Forrester, review of The Space Between Us, at Kimbofo (22 Nov. 2009): ‘A young architect opens the door to two police officers (or guards, as they are known in Ireland) who inform him that his wife, a solicitor, has been killed in a car crash. His reaction is not what one would expect. Instead of being overwhelmed with grief he’s overwhelmed by relief - their marriage had been floundering for a long time but neither party had had the courage to end it. Now, left alone to raise his two-year-old daughter, our unnamed narrator has been given a second chance to start afresh. When a married friend, Kate, confesses she’s in love with him, there seems only one road to take [...] In essence this is a novel about the choices we make in life and the consequences of those choices. It’s also very much about unrequited love, death, grief and the relationships between fathers and daughters. And I defy anyone not to read this and be incredibly moved by the gentle prose and the emotional story that unfolds but most of all by the powerhouse ending that turns everything else on its head. This book isn’t what I expected, it’s far more shocking and disturbing than I could have possibly envisaged, and I rather suspect anyone who decides to give it a try will concur.’ (For longer extract - incorporating full paraphrase and quotation - see RICORSO Library, “Criticism > Reviews”, infra.
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