Scourged

             

                    

                  Scourged - The Backstory - 10 questions 

1. What is the working title of your book?
     The working title of my book was "Mothers Day"  - although it has had  many more,  before I actually committed.  Being Libran I was incapable of making a decision until I realised it could only be called Scourged.

2. Where did the idea for this book come from ?
     The idea for the book came  from a series of articles and  postings about the stages of the crippling  disease of  Alzheimers in my Mother, Siobhan, an illness that the eponymous Scourge calls "death by a thousand cuts" Although engaged in another book entirely - (which is a whole other story as the Bishop said to the Actress ) - the sheer response and feedback from the great and the good suggested I would better serve my time documenting and narrating a story that is all too often "forgotten."  - Ahem  -  The implosion of the family dynamic as the  matriarch disappears incrementally, and the black sheep daughter has to step up to the plate.

3. What genre does your book fall under?
     Ironically, Memoir.

4. What actors would you choose to play your characters in a film based on your book?
     Diane Wiest/ Jack Nicholson, Christian Bale/ Drew Barrymore -   and Christina Ricci to play me.

5. What would be a one sentence synopsis of your book ?
     Memories of a life told by two voices.

6.  Will your book be self published or represented by an agency?

 In the immortal words of Withnail  when he is ringing his agent  from a call box - "The bastard  must  have  died" or my personal favourite  "lick ten per cent of the arses then" - my Editor nicknamed "Daddy-long-legs" was last seen ranting and roaming the Wicklow hills while rending his clothing and gnashing his teeth. I ran a fund:it campaign to raise the dollars to independently publish. And to have complete creative control as I am anal about how things look, and like to micro manage to the Nth detail.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript.
    I have been writing this book in my head for years. I first began writing short stories and chapters based around the subject back in 2008 when my Mother was admitted to a nursing home, which I saved to a word file and promptly ignored. As the illness progressed, I shelved the writing to come to terms with,  and process the ambiguous loss and the emotional incontinence that ensues. It became cathartic and traumatic to document the stages, but in doing so, I could vent and find some clarity in the discipline of the writing, the blue screen became my shrink. I had written to a point but no further until her gentle dying gifted me with the ending.

8. What other book would you compare this to, within your genre?
     "The Speckled People" by Hugo Hamilton

9. Who, or what inspired you to write this book ?
     My Mother Siobhán, who was the polar opposite of me in every way, but from whom I inherited enough detachment to narrate both her story, and ours. "Scourged" is a nostalgic yet harrowing  story set over 5 decades about childhood, and family, and the  formation and retention of memory and recall.  It is a task I undertook not lightly, but with consideration and respect for the memories that sadly were lost to her,  but which I have now recorded  for posterity. The first short story about her, and this illness was called Mothers Day, and then I wrote a play called Brigids Women, named for the hospital ward she spent 7 months in waiting to be transferred to a nursing home. After a decade of dementia, and heroic bravery and strength, Siobhán was called home earlier this year, on Brigids Day, and her months mind mass was held on Mothers Day. I feel I have her blessing.

10. What else could you add that may pique your readers interest?
      Scourged has been described as "groundbreaking and remarkable.

Reviews - Michelle Dooley Mahon is a prolific and multi-talented writer well known for her vivacious live performances.

Scourged is a complex and experimental work.

Described as a memoir it is closer to an autobiography in two voices, the context however is not schizophrenia but Alzheimer’s dementia. It is a dual narrative: the story of the author’s life in both her own voice and that of her mother who died in 2015 after suffering for ten years. Mahon’s volume is full of humour, though at times harrowing, and is inevitably underscored with a heart-wrenching sense of tragic loss. It is a very personal story and like her live performances is written with an unforgiving openness that triggers an immediate and somewhat emotional response from the reader. Although the content is set in the 50 years between the author’s birth and her mother’s death, in literary terms, the book is a story of ten years of growth, the growth of MDM

Dooley Mahon claims that her ambition was to give her mother Siobhan a voice but voice plays a much greater part in this work. MDM employs simple but effective and at times brave techniques in identifying the voices in Scourged. Initially the reader can differentiate very clearly between Mahon (the eponymous Scourge) and Siobhan because the latters voice is italicised. Once the reader recognises this platform, they are able to follow the change in voice as that of Siobhan becomes unrecognisable to Mahon herself, and finally falls into silence. The burgeoning awareness of the effects of Alzheimer’s were the catalyst for Dooley Mahon to try to explore and document her mother’s life before it was too late, in this she was doomed to fail as the horror of the inescapable forfeiture became apparent. What she has found is her own place in the world as a woman and a writer.

In its literary ambition this volume has the substance to stand out as a major success, and it also contains all the elements needed to be a bestseller.  It deserves this achievement because it is hugely important -  not only in raising the awareness of Alzheimer’s but as a resource for understanding the impact of the disease on individuals and society. It is flawed at times, but perhaps within that very fact, lies its greatness.

Dominic Williams

“MDM seeks to preserve the essence of her Mother as she succumbs to the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease.

The twin narratives serve to illuminate and mirror each other, in the process creating a shrinking receding infinity that the author crosses to reach the mind of her beloved Siobhán

Written with style, skill, humour and no little passion, Scourged brings home the bitter sweet truth that to live is to love and to love is to lose”

Declan Dempsey

“I read it in 2 sittings. My eyes hurt from laughing and crying. I’m going to read it again immediately”

Inspirational!

Jennifer Traupe

“Scourged is that most rare and wonderful creature, a book that is both entertaining and honest- like David Sederis, or Joan Didion before her, Dooley Mahon delves deep into the seam of the everyday, mining the ore of tragedy and comedy, shining a single head lamp as she digs, until the unsuspecting reader, laughed and cried out, is forced to go for a lie down”

Eoin Colfer

“Dooley Mahon’s talent lies in conjuring up not only crystal clear nostalgia and events, but describing them in a way that drops the reader into the story. I could smell chips and clove rocks and roses. I was in that room with her”

Theresa O’Brien

Scourged launches on October 22nd 2015