Grand

 Grand by Noelle McCarthy (2022 Penguin paperback 270pp)

Born in Ireland, Noelle McCarthy was something of a New Zealand media darling in the early 2000s. I recall several magazine and newspaper profiles following her career as she moved up from Auckland student radio to the state broadcaster Radio New Zealand. That’s where I first heard her - filling in for other hosts then eventually getting her own show airing over the long summer breaks. She was a bright and fiercely intelligent woman with an incredibly attractive accent. Then suddenly she was gone, apparently never to be mentioned again. If I had been a follower of gossip columns at the time I probably would have known more.

Grand in parts is a conventional memoir but it is centred on and focusses on McCarthy’s relationship with her mother Carol. Carol was a seemingly meek and mild woman who after having a drink or two became an angry beast beyond control of her family, a trait she passed on to her daughter to some extent.

The book starts with McCarthy having rushed across the world to Ireland upon learning her mother has only days to live. Then we flash back and forth in time to vignettes of their relationship. Along the way we learn a little more about both of them and their family. Most of it is interesting and enlightening but I did think the book verged into ‘misery porn’ often. Before she was married, Carol had two children she had to give up (one of which who died as a baby). She met McCarthy’s long-suffering father and had four more children at an early age. Part of her rage against the then-restricted culture of catholic Ireland was to drink, eventually succumbing to alcoholism.

We follow the young Noelle through her school days and beyond. In the late 1990s after working in a restaurant owned by a kiwi she decides to head to New Zealand. After some dead-end waitressing jobs, she gets a role at BFM student radio and the rest is history. What we didn’t know at the time was she was frequently following in her mother’s footsteps by drinking herself to oblivion.

Eventually she decides to accept help and gives up drinking. She marries and has a child of her own. All this is interspersed with stories of her mother and their on and off again communication. Carol is diagnosed with cancer and after refusing treatment she ends up in hospital which is where the book began. The ending to the story is inevitable.

Parts of this book were highly enjoyable and it manages to have something to say about friends, family and many aspects of life. I’m not sure I like the focus of an author’s memoir to be someone else entirely – it is trying to be two things at once and not entirely succeeding for me at least.

It’s a solid read, maybe not exactly uplifting but keeps you turning the pages until the end.