Tribute to a troubled mum
Letters From Brenda
Emma Kennedy
Hodder Studio, £16.99
Emma Kennedy’s mother Brenda was volatile, difficult and prone to embarrassing outbursts. She was also passionate, charismatic and fun – a larger-than-life character who never cooked, didn’t drive and didn’t carry money. She had two affairs during her 47-year marriage, yet her forbearing husband never stopped loving her.
After Brenda’s death from cancer seven years ago, the family home was sold. But the new owner found two leather suitcases in the loft, stuffed with 75 letters from Brenda to her daughter.
As Kennedy re-read the “treasure trove of light and love and pride”, she resolved to discover once and for all what had caused her mother’s erratic behaviour.
As well as researching Brenda’s family history, Kennedy asked a psychiatrist to read the letters and give his view. Had she suffered from depression, a personality disorder or something else entirely?
Brenda’s early life was undoubtedly challenging. Her profligate father walked out on the family early on. Brenda had regular tantrums – on one occasion throwing her dinner against the wall, and on another, scattering her mother’s prized ornaments across the floor. At 12, she tried to kill herself by jumping from an upstairs window. “Were you sent to see a psychiatrist?” asked her daughter. “No,” replied Brenda. “Nobody did anything. I think I was sent to Aunty Gerty for a bit of cake.”
Kennedy lightens the tone by interspersing her mother’s story with a selection of her hilarious letters, packed with entertaining anecdotes about her travels abroad.
The most moving chapters cover Brenda’s last few months, when the grief-stricken Kennedy would work by her bedside while she slept.
“The slow grind towards death was relentless,” she writes, “and yet, through the thick of sadness, there were moments where the old Brenda peeped through.”
Kennedy, a lawyer-turned-actress, TV writer and novelist, is best known for appearing in comedies Goodness Gracious Me and Miranda, and for winning Celebrity MasterChef in 2012.
Her memoir of wet and windy childhood holidays, The Tent, The Bucket And Me, was also turned into a TV series called The Kennedys.
Clearly a labour of love, this honest, insightful book is a touching tribute to her complex, inimitable mother.