And it is this that Donoghue – whose 2010 Booker-shortlisted bestseller Room was made into a film starring Brie Larsen – takes as inspiration for her book, casting three men as the founding friars: Artt, a wandering scholar and priest Trian, a young, awkward monk and his colleague Cormac, a survivor of great hardships and battle wounds, and late convert to Christianity. In our own galaxy, a monastery was first founded there in the 7th century. It is so unlikely a place, made up of more vertical than horizontal surfaces, it might easily have been a CGI of a planet far, far away, rather than an islet seven miles off the south west coast of Ireland. Googling Skellig Michael, it became clear why it was familiar: because of its role in recent Star Wars films The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. Her descriptions of a weird, wild island, where three holy men ventured to practise their beliefs, rang a bell. Partway through reading Emma Donoghue’s extraordinary new novel, déjà vu struck.
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