Cells, Gavin McCrea
‘Are you going into town today?’ she says, which annoys me because it’s something she says all the time, having forgotten she said it before, and I say, ‘Jesus, Mum, not this again,’ and she says, ‘What again?’ and I say, ‘Town is shut down,’ and while she can see I am upset and wants not to upset me like this, she is also wounded by my tone, and I am ashamed then and can only look at my plate, and I decide not to bring up what I intended to bring up, about the past, and about my need for her to apologise for it.
Gavin is spending the quarantine in a small flat in south Dublin with his eighty-year-old mother, whose mind is slowly slipping away. He has lived most of his adult life abroad and has returned home to care for her and to write a novel. But he finds that all he can write about is her.
Moving through a sequence of remembered rooms — the ‘cells’ — Gavin unspools an intimate story of his upbringing and early adulthood: feeling out of place in the insular suburb in which he grew up, the homophobic bullying he suffered at school, his brother’s mental illness and drug addiction, his father’s sudden death, his own devastating diagnosis, his struggles and triumphs as a writer, and above all, always, his relationship with his mother. Her brightness shines a light over his childhood, but her betrayal of his teenage self leads to years of resentment and disconnection. Now, he must find a way to reconcile with her, before it is too late.
Written with unusual frankness and urgency, Cells is at once an uncovering of filial love and its limits, and a coming to terms with separation and loss.
Gavin McCrea reading from Cells
It’s Damian Barr’s Literary Salon’s final Book of the Week episode of the season. But before we go, we want to bring your attention to an incredibly powerful memoir by critically acclaimed author Gavin McCrea entitled, Cells: Memories for My Mother,
The author of Mrs Engels and The Sisters Mao unspools an intimate story of feeling out of place in the insular suburb in which he grew up, the homophobic bullying he suffered at school, his brother’s mental illness and drug addiction, his father’s sudden death, his own devastating diagnosis, his struggles and triumphs as a writer, and above all, his relationship with his mother.
Published by independent press, Scribe, we cannot wait for you to read Gavin’s accomplished new book perfect for readers of Seán Hewitt’s All Down Darkness Wide.
This podcast is edited and produced by Megan Bay Dorman, and programmed by Matt Casbourne.
Damian Barr’s Literary Salon is where the freshest debuts and the biggest bestsellers read for the first time from their latest greatest books and share their own personal stories.
Enjoy the Literary Salon podcast's Book of the Week where each bite-sized episode offers an exclusive taster of a new book. World premieres include Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain, Maddie Mortimer's Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies and Maggie O'Farrell's The Marriage Portrait. You're going to love it.
Hosted by writer and broadcaster, Damian Barr, produced and edited by Megan Bay Dorman and programmed by Matt Casbourne.
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