Grand: Becoming My Mother’s Daughter by Noelle McCarthy

Book Review by Rebecca Beardsall

“This is the last time I will see my mother. I try to be very clear about this in my head, so I won’t forget anything” (252). This sentence encapsulates the essence of a stunning memoir by Noelle McCarthy titled Grand.

Grand, a brilliant and brutally honest memoir, tackles mother/daughter relationships, ancestral trauma, forced adoptions, postpartum depression, sibling relationships, alcoholism and sobriety, transnational life, birth and death … yes, all of that. And McCarthy powerfully roots all those themes in place and with emotional connections for the reader to feel and experience each moment.

The book starts with quick glimpses using intertwining narratives while weaving in and out of time–much like the author’s life while deep in the clutches of alcoholism. We learn of the roots of her alcoholism in Ireland and her journey to sobriety in Aotearoa New Zealand. The exposition is dizzying and complex, allowing the reader to sink into the disorienting life of an alcoholic. The narrative becomes more crisp and focused as McCarthy moves into a life of sobriety even when the world around her is still entrenched in and around alcohol.

Through it all, McCarthy provides pithy moments to center the reader in the experience: “No matter where I am in the house, no matter what house I will ever live in, I can hear that pistol crack of a can opening” (78). In addition, each page wades into emotions like the scene when McCarthy is trying to stop her mother from going out and drinking: “This is my mother. This is what she is doing to me. There is nobody to fix this. Nobody is coming” (83).

McCarthy doesn’t shy away from anything, whether it is her drunken blackouts with an aftermath of consequences or her mother’s unwed pregnancies (the babies she lost) or the postpartum depression and suicide attempts in her lineage: “Mammy rings then, and tells me about her own mother going into the river. I need a second to process this – both my grandmothers, their insistence on wading into rivers. ‘She came out again then,’ she says, matter-of-factly” (187).

Throughout the narrative, McCarthy seeks to find place, a sense of rootedness, where she can find and claim her space. On a night during her return to Ireland, she states, “I walk fast in the cold, the moon flying along in the dark-blue sky above me, down dark narrow lanes that reek of moss and piss. I feel no fear. I grew up here” (160). Three pages later she is nervous about her blind date, with her future husband, in Auckland, “But it’s all right to want things. This is my city” (163). Cork and Auckland hold essences of McCarthy, and she is firmly linked to both. One of the complexities of a transnational life is how the other home haunts you while you are across the globe, and the longing shifts depending on where you are, “Even if I spend my whole life until I die, on the other side of the planet, as far away as it’s possible to get from here, I’m never leaving” (238). The rooted and unrooted life is fully exposed in this poignant memoir.

Grand is an honest memoir that mixes humor and gut-wrenching lived experiences, which perfectly portrays the complexities of being human and living in and through the lives of others and their trauma.

Author’s notes:
Full-disclosure – I am also a transnational; my life a constant straddling of place between Aotearoa (New Zealand) and the United States. This book resonated with me on a deeply personal level so much so that when I only had twenty-six more pages remaining to finish the book I stopped reading, because I didn’t want it to end. I went for a walk instead and listened to songs from Aotearoa while soaking in the fern covered woods of Washington to make me feel like I was back in Auckland.

This book is not in the USA market yet. I purchased my copy via MightyApe; they ship to the US. I have noticed a few copies available via sellers on the US amazon site.

Rebecca Beardsall (MA, Lehigh University; MFA, Western Washington University) is the author of My Place in the Spiral. She lives in Bellingham, Washington with her husband and her cat, Myla. Find her at: rebeccabeardsall.com