A battle-stained memoir of survival
Grand: Becoming my mother’s daughter ,by Noelle McCarthy (Penguin, $35)
Noelle McCarthy’s favourite book is Dracula, the tale of a fascinating, dangerous entity, capable of eclipsing all others. Literally sucking out your life blood, yet the enthralment remains. You want to let him take from you, even as you’re maimed, drained and changed.
Noelle’s Mammy is the vampire of her life, inspiring love and admiration, hatred and fear in equal measures. A tiny pinkhaired Irish woman, she looms as though swathed in the bat-like cape of gothic horror even as she shrinks and vanishes from this life.
McCarthy emerges from her memoir battle-stained yet triumphant having survived her great enemy and greatest ally. She also emerges as a writer of unusual ability.
Beautifully structured series memories are retold under the overarching narrative of her mother’s last illness, making Grand’s delicate characters and delightful phrasing read like a delicious novel.
McCarthy comes of age in ‘90s Cork, Ireland, with a black velvet choker; falls into unexpected fame in the unstructured bFM studio; waitresses for celebrities vying to be noticed in the Prego courtyard. McCarthy’s vibrant charm is so engaging, her turn of phrase so deft, that it all feels like time spent with a dazzling, funny best friend.
Carol, McCarthy’s mother, is an alcoholic, but that isn’t really what this book is about. McCarthy is sensitive to the many familial and cultural influences that push people towards their chosen oblivion, and how abuse and misery in one generation is passed down to the next. A society that considers it a blessing when an unwed mother dies in childbirth can’t be surprised when survivors, met with a wall of judgment and silence, self-medicate with whatever is cheap at the offlicence.
That the buried pain and anger rise up sometimes when the dose has been too strong is inevitable. That the misery is visited on whoever is around at the time – usually the captive audience of her own children – is a given and the cycle renews. It takes immense strength and selfawareness to put a spoke in that evil wheel.
McCarthy only occasionally alludes to the difficulty of maintaining sobriety after she stops drinking at 30 but it must be an ongoing feat of will. Like giving up alcohol, McCarthy knows she has to separate from Carol before the relationship that gave her life also kills her, first in her youth and then at the end: she has to say I love you and goodbye, whether or not she hears it in return.
Grand is funny, clever, beautiful, sad. It’s more of a eulogy and less of a diatribe than it could have been. McCarthy protects her mother with gentleness and love in the telling and finds kindness and redemption for everyone, including herself.