Catherine O'Flynn: 'When I saw my name on the Orange longlist, I thought it was a computer error'

Catherine O'Flynn on how she wrote What Was Lost and her inspirations for Mr Lynch's Holiday
Catherine O'Flynn in central Birmingham
Catherine O'Flynn in central Birmingham. 'I had low expectations of myself' Photograph: David Sillitoe for the Guardian David Sillitoe/Guardian

Born in Birmingham to Irish parents, Catherine O'Flynn took on a variety of jobs – journalist, record shop assistant manager and language teacher – before her first novel was published by Tindal Street Press in 2007. What Was Lost is an unsettling and insightful novel about a girl who goes missing from a shopping centre, and it was longlisted for the Orange and Man Booker prizes, winning the Costa book award in 2008. She has written two more novels, the most recent of which is Mr Lynch's Holiday.

What is it about writing that makes you want to keep doing it?

There are two strands to that answer. One is that I don't want to sit down and do it! I often have, in between novels, about a year where I do very little writing towards a novel, but I like having those fallow periods where I'm not over-analysing every possible story idea. The other is rather selfish – what I enjoy is finding something that really interests me, a combination of characters and place, and working through hypotheses and ideas and seeing how they pan out.

Do you picture your ideal reader when brainstorming novel ideas?

I don't. It's great if people also find those things interesting, but I write for my own satisfaction. You're spending three or more years writing a novel, so it's got to be completely absorbing. And also it's probably not terribly helpful or healthy to start framing it in terms of what other people might want to read from the start, because that's impossible to second guess.

How did you discover you wanted to write books?

I'd always enjoyed expressing myself with words. I found myself in a situation I wanted to write about, working in this shopping centre. I had low expectations of myself, which was good and bad. It meant that yes, I thought, why not try writing a novel, but it was kind of crazy as I'd never written anything of any scale before! But it came from a desire to explore this place and the characters I had in my head.

How did you react when What Was Lost started to appear on lists for prizes?

When it was longlisted for the Orange prize, I was at home and I knew the longlist was being announced but I wasn't wondering if my book was on there. I clicked on an article about it, and my name was there, and I remember thinking, is this some kind of weird computer error where one of my files has become melded with the web page! It felt so unreal.

In Mr Lynch's Holiday, we meet Dermot and Eamonn, father and son, two generations of Birmingham men who contrast markedly with each other.

What interested me about them was the way the gap between two generations seems especially vast, and I think that can be true if you're the child of older parents, immigrant parents, or if the child has moved up the social scale through education. Dermot grows up in rural Ireland, Eamonn in postindustrial Birmingham with the advantages of education, but the extent to which that makes him a better person is questionable, really. He is also part of the self-hating middle class, who are ill at ease with their new status and background. Dermot and his wife have a much more grounded identity and are not quite so neurotic.

The novel unfolds against the backdrop of a Spanish expat settlement. Why did this location appeal to you?

I wanted the novel to talk about immigration and migration. For many Britons, Spain is the promised land. Eamonn is not a typical expat, but he still fell for that idea. That kind of migration has a sense of entitlement and almost greed – why not be happier still? It contrasts with that of Eamonn's parents, which came out of a need to survive and stake their place in the world. The other reason is that I lived in Spain for a year, and after a few months, even in Barcelona, it was isolating. All the things that are beautiful about the place become invisible to you after six weeks and you feel dislocated.

What advice would you give writers who are sending manuscripts to publishers?

When submitting What Was Lost to agents, I was a) clueless and b) I didn't expect to hear anything back! I think you have to do it for yourself. Don't feel your value is measured by whether it gets published or not. So many terrible books get published and so many brilliant books get overlooked. It's much much easier said than done but if somehow you can kid yourself that that's what you're doing…