First book from award winning director
AWARD winning local filmmaker Declan Cassidy has just launched his first book which has already hit the Irish best seller list.
Better known for his Irish Film Board funded short ‘Whatever Turns You On’ that qualified for the Oscars in 2010, local man, Declan Cassidy’s new novel has jumped into the best sellers category since its recent launch in Dublin’s Hodges Figgis bookstore.
Set on the increasingly popular Camino de Santiago – the pilgrim trail that leads to Santiago de Compostela in North West Spain, ‘Pins and Needles’ is being credited with establishing the new genre of ‘Celtic Magic Realism’.
‘It was supposed to be a film,’ admits the author.
‘I’d been working on the script when my Dad was diagnosed with lung cancer. Over that last couple of years I’d sit with him and tell him the story as I wrote it so, by the time he died at the end of 2014, it had turned into a book instead.’
Cassidy walked over 10 trips on the Camino in researching the novel.
‘Most people are familiar with the 800km way that runs from France to Santiago through the successful Martin Sheen movie. I set the book on the final stage of the less popular Portuguese way that runs from Lisbon instead,’ he explains.
‘You have to walk at least 100km to qualify for your certificate of achievement so a lot of people start at Sarria which is the last stage of the French way. The equivalent on the Portuguese route runs from the Spanish/Portuguese border and is a lot less touristic.