Book Club: Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Séamas O'Reilly

Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Séamas O'Reilly (2021), published by Little Brown

What is it about? Séamas O’Reilly’s mother died of breast cancer when he was five, leaving him, his ten brothers and sisters and their beloved father to manage amid the backdrop of the Troubles in 1990s Derry. He tells the story of a live lived in her absence, often to comic effect.

Why should you read it? Can loss be leavened by a laugh? Choosing an unconventional path for a comic memoir, this hilarious and heart-warming work testifies that losing a parent doesn’t end a childhood. Avoiding cloying sentimentality, O’Reilly excels in crafting an evocative portrait of innocence, family and community with humour and verve from the opening line, "One thing they don’t tell you about mammies is that when they die you get new trousers."

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Listen: Seamas O'Reilly talks to Ray D'Arcy

It started with a tweet… O’Reilly posted a now legendary thread on Twitter, responding to a request to share stories about "work related f**k-ups." He credits the response to this as affording him the chance to quit his job and start writing full-time. "Got my days wrong and ended up alone in a room with my boss and the President of Ireland while I was on ketamine" is the opening line.

What the critics say: "Did Ye Hear Mammy Died is a grief memoir that shuns sentimentality in favor of gallows humor…It's rare to read about good fathers in memoirs, and O'Reilly's portrait, complete with bits about how his dad is "God's one, true, perfect miser," who was nevertheless driven to "make sure we never felt poorer than anyone else," is hilarious and moving." - Kristen Martin, NPR.

For readers of… David Sedaris, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, Eimear McBride, Grief Is a Thing with Feathers, Max Porter.

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