HOME thoughts from abroad have come back to haunt Liverpool-born Grace Jolliffe in the nicest possible way. The now Irish-based writer/director's new novel Piggy Monk Square - set in a Toxteth seen through the eyes of a little girl in the months before the 1981 riots - has been receiving rave reviews from the people who matter the most. Her Merseyside peers. Educating Rita creator Willy Russell describes it as "stunningly well written" while screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce says: "It's unbearably tense and utterly believable. The voice of its young heroine is so beguiling and convincing that you feel that you've met her." Such praise is music to the ears of 43-year-old Jolliffe who grew up in Liverpool 8 during the 60s and 70s before moving as a teenager to County Wicklow with her Irish father Eamonn and Walton-born mum Joan. "I think the publishers send out copies of the books looking for endorsements. This time they were lucky enough to get some nice reviews back, which is great because as a writer you can sometimes get too close to your own work and forget how important it is to discover how other people see it." Grace is speaking from her home in Greystones, a picturesque seaside town just south of Dublin. And while her Scouse accent is now almost entirely masked by a melodic Irish lilt - "when I first came here no-one could understand me because, even though they think the Liverpool accent is lovely they had to keep asking me to slow down a bit," she laughs - her own childhood memories of the city have served her well with Piggy Monk Square. Using a witty and convincing first person vernacular, her creation Rebecca, or Sparra, tells us about her family, her friend Debbie and the wealth of local characters who permeate her world. Matters take a sinister turn, though, when Sparra and Debbie discover a trapdoor in a derelict house and an enigmatic policeman with a bad case of the sniffles makes his presence felt. It's a gripping, intriguing page-turner which bears testimony to the craft of Jolliffe, whose award-winning short films, all of which she wrote and directed, have been shown worldwide. They include Let's Pretend, about a girl's hopes of going on a school trip, Nowhere Land , the tale of a boy who has run away from home and the spoof documentary Zombies, in which the much-maligned resurrected dead give their side of the story. Which is all a long way from the point in the mid-1990s when, by her own admission, she was stuck in a boring nine to five job processing accident claims. Every week, however, she would attend a creative writing class, and that provided her with a lifeline of hope. "I used to love meeting other writers - it's great being among a group who you can read your work to and get some feedback. "Being a writer can be a very lonely existence so it's good to get some moral support." Eventually she scraped up the courage to quit work and pay for a three-year college course specialising in film and TV. "I was a divorced single mother so to give up a paid job and go back to college took quite a leap of faith." It was eight years ago during those long daily bus rides from Greystones to the college in Dun Laoghaire and back again that Sparra's beguiling, day-dreaming character began to take shape. "I'd always had this character in my head and she would kind of speak to me. I was not like she was actually there, it was like I could think the voice. So I decided to give her a story and so during the three hour return journey on the bus I wrote it all down." Her manuscript remained unseen until last year when publishers Tindal Street Press put out an all-points alert for regional writers to submit their work. Grace thought her book fitted the bill and so did Tindal who snapped it up. It's not hard to understand why. One of its most appealing facets is the authentic use of language, which at times mirrors the first person appeal of the autistic teenager in Mark Haddon's hugely successful The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. It's also laced with some wry Scouse humour too. "Liverpool humour is something unique," says Grace.. "There are other areas with a sense of humour but Liverpool's is always distinctly recognisable for its dryness - Liverpudlians have a way of saying something very matter-of-factly and making it funny. It's also quick and very witty." Grace regularly returns to her home town to see her brother Joe Kelly - "he stayed when we moved because he didn't want to miss watching Everton" - and friends. She's accordingly duly impressed with the city's progress since the darker days in which Piggy is set. "I think it's improving a lot and it's certainly become very lively. It almost looks like its being rebuilt and a lot of what I was used to seeing when I was growing up is gone or unrecognisable now. Places like Upper Parliament Street are completely different now - I thought it was somewhere else entirely when I went there last." Whether the portrayal of social deprivation and racism which peppers the book has improved in tandem, however, is something she feels unqualified to talk about. "I would need to spend more time back there to give you a proper answer to that question," she responds sagely. Meanwhile, she'll be back this week flying in for the book's official launch at the Everyman Bistro and reflecting perhaps on the symbolism of the eight years in which both Sparra's - and her own voice - can be properly heard. "It's been worth the sacrifice - you only get one life and if its a choice between a secure but boring job and giving it up for a chance at doing something that you really want to do, well." And we leave it at that. * WE HAVE three free copies of Piggy Monk Square to give away. Send your name and address on a postcard to Piggy competition, Features Department, Liverpool Daily Post, Old Hall Street, Liverpool, L69 3EB. Closing date is next Tuesday, May 24. | 
