Publication date:
21 September 2016Length of book:
186 pagesPublisher
University of Delaware PressISBN-13: 9781611496222
One day, when Mary Rose Callaghan was 13, her mother jumped into the freezing Irish Sea. Knowing that her mother was an asthmatic, the shock of seeing her dive into “the deep end” began Mary Rose’s curiosity about her mother’s life. That curiosity spawned the writing of this memoir, a coming-of-age tale focused on Mary Rose’s relationship with her mother, which endured through economic hardship, and her mother’s descent into mental illness and alcoholism. The Deep End begins by tracing her mother’s arrival in Ireland in the 1930s, training to be a nurse, and marriage to Mary Rose’s father, continues through Mary Rose’s difficult childhood and later success as a writer, and culminates with her marriage to Robert Hogan and her mother’s death.
If Frank McCourt had been a woman, this would have been his story. No, it could only be Mary Rose Callaghan's, an eldest daughter, simultaneously trying to save her father, her five siblings, and her beloved mother from mental illness, alcoholism, asthma, extreme poverty, terrifying debt. "Our family had experienced a tragedy as bad as any Shakespeare," she says when her father dies, and sure enough, the gradual dissolution of her once-wealthy and prestigious family is worthy or the bard. Mary Rose herself, as she stumbles through her school years, her head always n a book, is tragic, brave, and funny. This is an amazing tale that swoops up the whole of the culture, and of America's, with grace and intelligence.