Anne Griffin is from a working-class family in Dublin and pursued a master’s in creative writing at the age of 44. Prior to publishing her debut novel, When All Is Said, Griffin was a short story writer. She won the John McGahern Award for Literature and was shortlisted for the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award and the Sunday Business Post Short Story Award. She draws on her experience with this form for the structure of When All Is Said, with each of the five central chapters telling the story of a different person in Maurice’s life. Each has its own narrative arc and examines the novel’s central themes; the book is formatted similarly to a collection of short stories, book-ended by the framing device of Maurice’s evening in the hotel. Griffin fashions these short narratives into a cohesive whole through their shared themes, the device of the coin, and the perspective of the narrator, Maurice.

When All Is Said is set in 20th-century Ireland, and this socio-economic and physical environment is a defining part of Maurice’s character and story. Griffin taps into Irish literary tradition to show how Maurice’s circumstances and his relationship with