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9781781179505

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I really devoured this memoir of Brighid 'Biddy' McLaughlin, an Irish journalist and storyteller, and not only because I had to meet my ARC deadline. I had never heard of her, but I was intrigued by the blurb. Result: the book had me captivated from the beginning till the end! McLaughlin has had an unbelievable life full of colourful friends, unconventional people and alas, a lot of tragedy. Her wonderful sister Siobhan got murdered and the drowning of her husband Michael. Yet this book is not dramatic. McLaughlin also has a deep love for cooking and for me people who love to cook can hardly go wrong. I loved the way she looks at the world and life. I have worked as a journalist as well and I always believed everybody had a story to tell. And so does McLaughlin. Her book is an honest hommage to all the beautiful and less beautiful people McLaughlin met during her life: bohemian friends, rich weirdoes, poets, editors.... The most heartbreaking hommage is the one to Seanie. She's the sister everybody deserves and my hearty broke a couple of times, even though the book isn't overly emotional. All the stories are patches of the patchwork of McLaughlin's life, analysed from a distance, whether it's love, narcissists or tragedy... There is a lot to learn from this book. Thank you BookSirens and Mercier Press for this ARC -- Veerle * Goodreads * 'There was a tiny part of me that wondered if Biddy’s Cottage was real. That there was a woman called “Biddy”, who leaned so hard into that name that she lived in a rustic cottage. And that she said “Tis” and “Twas” like Peig Sayers, but looked like Kim Basinger? Okay, it’s an elderly American tourist’s fever dream, whatever you say. But Google Maps makes it very plain – the cottage is real all right. After rocking past some of the most expensive homes in Europe (eyes peeled for the lesser-spotted Enya and the common or garden Bono), onto a road where the smell of smouldering turf lingers, a distinctive red door half opens – as in, its top half swings open. Revealed inside is one of those precious old-timey thresholds one can linger over while telling stories and keeping an eye out for rich farmers. And there, doing none of that right this second, is the actual Biddy. Very warm, very welcoming, very beautiful. But real? It wouldn’t do to check right away, and so I cooingly flit to the fabric of the cottage, authentically restored by her craftsman father using many of the materials that would have been used back when the majority of us lived in these cottages. Wood floors from Donegal, a hanging lobster pot, a sort of cobblestone on the bathroom floor. “’Tis as if my house is human with its windowed eyes, its daily scents and odours of turf, wood, sea and fried herrings in sizzling butter,” is how she describes it in the first sentence of her new memoir. She doesn’t say “’tis” at all in real life – it grew out of her love for the work of John B Keane, who was also a friend. On the cottage’s walls are further signs that this is indeed a place of careful homage – the Sacred Heart, the photo of JFK, the teapots, items and images that knowingly transport you to an Ireland past. But there are other parts, too, that make you understand that both things can be true – the whole setting is both self-consciously quaint and also very real. She is a person whose story is tied up with things – each of the chapters in her new memoir is named after an object – and the most important part, and the place where many of them are housed, is the cottage. On the walls around its gorgeous hearth there are photos of her father and son, both looking like movie stars of a bygone era. There is also an empty picture frame which symbolises one of the two great losses of Biddy’s life – her sister Siobhán, who was murdered by her husband, Brian Kearney, at their home in Goatstown in 2006. “The savage”, as Biddy refers to him, tried to make his wife’s death look like a suicide, leaving her body for her parents to find. The cruelty of that, and the pain he left behind him, are unimaginable. “It is still a torture, because none of us ever thought it would come to that,” Biddy says now. “We just thought he was a boring, miserable bastard. ""I did want to kill him, and I didn’t put that in the book, but there was a time in my life when, if I’d had a gun, I would have killed him. Because what he did was just so savage. “She was so vulnerable and so gorgeous. People say I’ll never be happy now, but how can you forget a life force?” Underneath the couch in the sitting room of the cottage is a madeleine baking tin. In its half shells there are oceans of grief. One windswept night before she died Siobhán – “Seanie” to her sister – knocked on the door of the cottage with the tray. She had gone to multiple shops in town looking for one for Biddy, an avid baker. Seanie told her: “Someday we must go to Commercy in France. That’s where the madeleine cakes originate from.” But underneath the optimism of that beautiful plan was a shadow. A phone call with “the savage” had left Seanie shaken. She went away again into the night. It was the last time Biddy ever saw her.' -- Donal Lynch * ‘There was a time in my life when I would’ve killed him’ – Brighid McLaughlin on sister’s murder *

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Brighid 'Biddy' McLaughlin is an award-winning Irish journalist known for her captivating storytelling.

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