In a boom era for both memoir and Irish writing, Dublin academic Emilie Pine’s winningly frank debut collection of essays lays bare all the aspects of her life that are hardest to talk about, from infertility to depression to menopause. She writes, she says, “to unlock the code of silence that I kept for so many years … so that I can, at last, feel present in my own life.”
The book opens with a wry, shocking account of finding her alcoholic father “in a small pool of his own shit” in a run-down Greek hospital: “After years of teaching Beckett plays, I am finally living in one.”
Elsewhere she explores the silences and shame associated with growing up in a female body: lifelong sexism and female conditioning, taboos around menstruation, the “hunger regime” of her troubled adolescence, and her “wild child” years identifiable only in retrospect as a time of neglect and sexual exploitation.
The medics’ obfuscation around her miscarriage and the oddity of being the child of separated parents in a country without divorce are particularly Irish experiences, but what is most striking about the collection as a whole is its universality. These are not new stories, but they still urgently need to be told. Pine does so with an honesty and vigour that are always uplifting, despite her painful material.
• Notes to Self: Essays is published by Penguin (RRP £9.99) . To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
