Grand

Carol McCarthy, the author's mother, spends her evenings in the lounges of Cork City pubs, venting bitterly about the life she has lived and the losses she has suffered. She can be funny, magnetic and generous, but she can also be cruel and deeply wounded, and her daughter Noelle grows up in the middle of that contradiction.

As soon as she is able, Noelle leaves Ireland for New Zealand, determined to build a life that looks nothing like the one she came from. When her mother falls ill, however, she has to return home and confront the people and history she had tried to put behind her.

The memoir moves from Catholic Ireland in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s to Auckland in the early years of the new millennium. It explores the unseen bonds of family, the harm that is passed down from one generation to the next, and the courage required to break those patterns. Her mother's last words, spoken just before she died, expressed a steady faith that everything would be all right.