MAMMY DEAREST

Writer and broadcaster Noelle McCarthy’s memoir is the story of a mother-daughter relationship that is biting – literally – fiery, funny, toxic, boozy and ultimately redemptive.

- MICHELE HEWITSON

Noelle McCarthy, the broadcaster, podcaster and journalist, has two obsessions: her mother and Dracula. She has written a memoir, Grand: Becoming my mother’s daughter, in which both characters flounce across the pages, one with fangs wearing a cape, the other, also with fangs, wearing, on occasion, a pumpkin head.

You can have fangs and a mad sense of humour. The latter was Mammy, Caroline, and she died two years ago. Years ago, when I last interviewed McCarthy, she told me some funny Mammy stories and showed me, on her phone, a picture of Mammy at home in Cork, Ireland, wearing said pumpkin head. It wasn’t Halloween. She had bought a job lot of dress-up costumes for €10.

Her mother was a card, a natural performer, says McCarthy. I already knew that. So, when I heard she had written a memoir about her mother – I didn’t then know about Dracula – I thought: “This’ll be a cheery read – all jolly Irish japes and funny Mammy lines and a drink or two thrown in.” Yet here I am asking a cod-psychology question of the very worst kind: “Was Mammy her Dracula or was she her mother’s Dracula?” It is a fairly loopy question, but you do have to ask because they did, figuratively and frequently, seem to suck the very blood from each other’s souls – if souls have blood. Who knows?