If Frank McCourt had been a woman, this would have been his story. No, it could only be Mary Rose Callaghan's, an eldest daughter, simultaneously trying to save her father, her five siblings, and her beloved mother from mental illness, alcoholism, asthma, extreme poverty, terrifying debt. "Our family had experienced a tragedy as bad as any Shakespeare," she says when her father dies, and sure enough, the gradual dissolution of her once-wealthy and prestigious family is worthy or the bard. Mary Rose herself, as she stumbles through her school years, her head always n a book, is tragic, brave, and funny. This is an amazing tale that swoops up the whole of the culture, and of America's, with grace and intelligence.
— Felda Brown, poet and essaysit
Don’t be surprised if you read The Deep End all in one sitting, laughing often, feeling deeply moved. It’s a page-turner, the story of a girl, her flamboyant mother, and how the two parented one another as the family moved from one house to another and fell on bad times. Mary Rose Callaghan has a gift for selecting details. She paints a poignant picture of her childhood and adolescence, but by the end of the book, her reader has also gained a remarkable sense of what it felt like to live in Ireland during the last half of the twentieth century. I am grateful for this new addition to the work of one of Ireland’s notable writers. The Deep End is a book to treasure.
— Jeanne Murray Walker, University of Delaware, professor of English
Mary Rose Callaghan’s The Deep End: a Memoir of Growing up in Ireland adds a powerful, new voice to the distinguished tradition of Irish memoir exemplified by Frank McCourt and Edna O’Brien. In her fearlessly vivid yet gracious style, honed in the process of writing a biography of Katherine O’Shea, nine novels, and numerous articles and stories, Callaghan weaves her own story into the history of mid-century Ireland and the transatlantic crossings of herself, her mother, and her grandparents. This is the story of a middle class, family whose fortunes take a nose-dive. Daughter of an Irish “gentleman farmer” and an American mother, Callaghan’s story includes that of her American grandfather, founder of the Film Company of Ireland and one-time Minister Plenipotentiary in the Wilson Administration and her Irish grandmother from a prominent Limerick family. Hers is a story that examines, in personal experiences, the major themes and movements in the Irish–indeed human–experience: emigration, alcoholism, mental illness, Irish Catholicism, evictions, violence, and abuse. But it is also a portrait of the artist as a young girl, of a family surviving and celebrating the human condition. A thank-you note to her troubled, but brave, mother who taught her “to go in the deep end,” to examine her life and to mine her memory to create art, Callaghan’s memoir is both an insightful examination of the Irish world of her youth and a brave and illuminating depiction of her own family struggling, as we all do, to live life well, fully, and lovingly.
— Maryanne Felter, Cayuga Community College, English department
Mary Rose Callaghan’s style is so quiet that you don’t notice the sharp edge. She doesn’t go in for display, and doesn’t need to here. Her memoir deals with great themes: family love and failure, prosperity, a crashing fall, and life going on. A true writer, she faces the facts and embraces them in her own offbeat voice.
— Adrian Kenny, author