Ireland, Ann 1953-

views updated

IRELAND, Ann 1953-

PERSONAL: Born May 19, 1953, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; daughter of Bain Billings (an artist) and Elizabeth (a cook; maiden name, Fairn) Ireland; companion of Tim Deverell (an artist); children: Thomas Patrick Deverell. Education: University of British Columbia, B.F.A., 1976.

ADDRESSES: Home—Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Office—Department of Continuing Education, Ryerson University, 350 Victoria St., Toronto, Ontario M5B 2K3, Canada.

CAREER: Writers Union of Canada, Toronto, Ontario, arts administrator, 1977-78; Canadian Book Information Centre, Toronto, arts administrator, 1979-80; Village Book Store, Toronto, clerk, 1980-85; Ryerson University, Toronto, creative writing teacher in Department of Continuing Education. Writer in residence, Windsor Public Library, 1988, and North York Public Library, 1995; guest on media programs.

MEMBER: Writers Union of Canada, PEN Canada (past president; member of board of directors).

AWARDS, HONORS: Seal Books First Novel Award from W. H. Smith and Books in Canada, 1985, for A Certain Mr. Takahashi; Outstanding Young Alumnus Award, University of British Columbia, 1988.

WRITINGS:

A Certain Mr. Takahashi (novel), McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1985.

The Instructor (novel), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1996.

Exile (novel), Simon & Pierre (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2002.

Contributor to anthologies, including Words We Call Home, Writing and Gender, and Canadian Fiction Anthology. Contributor to periodicals.

ADAPTATIONS: The novel A Certain Mr. Takahashi was adapted as the screenplay The Pianist.

SIDELIGHTS: Ann Ireland's novels explore passion, art, power, and obsession. In A Certain Mr. Takahashi, she writes about two teenaged sisters, Jean and Colette, and their romantic obsession with a neighbor, symphony conductor Yoshi Takahashi. The sisters' adoration of Yoshi leads them to adopt the culture of Japan in their everyday lives. Eventually, the adolescent crush they share is consummated in a Montreal hotel room. The novel alternates between scenes of Jean and Colette as girls and as grown women, five years after their tryst with Yoshi. "The novel's true centre is the world the sisters create around their idea of Japan and Mr. Takahashi," observed Heather Henderson in Saturday Night. "Daughters of suburbia, Jean and Colette rise at seven for zazen, don kimonos, and become Maki and Rikko-san. They also plunder their idol's garbage and try to catch a glimpse of him. . . . Their sexual initiation, with its triangular configuration, seems drawn from the pages of Penthouse except that, for once, it's rendered from the female viewpoint. It's playful, generous, and free of jealousy."

Ireland's second novel, The Instructor, is "a brilliant study of power and obsession in a relationship," Lynne Van Luven wrote in Quill and Quire. The main characters, explained Van Luven, are Otto Guest, "a lanky, sexy, middle-aged painter whose ego ultimately exceeds his talent," and Simone Paris, a nineteen-year-old student who runs away to Mexico with him. Eventually she returns to Canada to become the director of an arts festival, while Otto remains behind, drunk, in Mexico. "Starkly written, filled with dialogue," wrote Van Luven, "The Instructor is at first deceptively simple—a series of restrained sketches rather than a full-blown landscape of passion gone awry. But as Ireland leads us back through the genesis of Simone's relationship with Otto, she reveals a densely nuanced series of miniatures depicting the symbiotics of need, altruism, lust, and insecurity. In short, Ireland limns what draws a man and a woman together as well as what drives them apart."