Book Review: The Mammy

By Brendan O'Carroll

• Pub Date: 1999 

• Where I bought this book: Last Exit Books, Kent, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: I read The Young Wan, another book in this "not a series" and it was tender and funny

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    Agnes Browne is a widowed mother of seven children, living in a ghetto of North Dublin in the late 1960s, and eking out a living selling produce in the market on Moore Street.

    Yet this is not a sad story of Irish poverty, nor a heavy-handed outlook on Irish life. Rather, it's an amusing, sometimes laugh-out-loud, yet always loving look at a mother dealing with the realities of raising six young boys and a sole daughter.

    One of the funniest chapters has her handling her eldest boy, Mark, 12 and unknowingly entering puberty, who is petrified when he finds hair growing on what he called his willy. She first wanted to know who willy was. When she realized it was his penis, she put on the kettle.

    She told him it was part of his growing up. When he asked why, she said her modern woman's explanation went out the window. "That's to keep your willy warm when you go swimming." 

    She was done. "Now, out with yeh," 

    So, Agnes can be profane and exasperated, yet warm to her brood. She accepts their traits and quirks, letting them be themselves as much as they can within the confines of their tiny flat. She keeps them in line, but will go to the mat when they're mistreated by the hard nuns at their Catholic School.

    It's a strong woman and mother, who anybody who has lived with or knows an Irish Catholic family is quite familiar with.

    O'Carroll paints her and the family in broad strokes, giving us small vignettes to portray Agnes, her family, her friends, and her neighborhood. At less than 200 pages, it's a quick and funny read.