There is a sense of dread from the opening of Marise Gaughan’s compelling Trouble: A Memoir. No wonder, this is a story of profound, shocking loss and its ramifications, abetted by evocative language that gives it an undeniable power.
Gaughan, an Irish stand-up comedian based in London, has previously written and performed an award-winning Dublin Fringe Festival show that explored similar topics to the ones dealt with here. Trouble, her first book, is full of smart, dark humour. Despite its frequently grim subject matter, it’s a compelling, not depressing, read.
An intelligent and precocious child growing up in suburban Dublin, Gaughan was burdened by an alcoholic father whose abuse of drink masked his serious underlying mental health issues for years. Intensely close, they treat each other almost as equals, the parent not afraid to share the realities of the adult world with his young daughter. His decline into severe mental distress, and what that results in, marks Gaughan for life.
With adolescence she becomes overwhelmingly aware of boys, and Gaughan is frank and often explicit about the narrator’s sexual curiosity, awakening and journey. An increasingly angry and disruptive teenager, she wants her “normal” dad back, but he is lost to his demons – at one point he asks the bewildered 14-year-old to write out his last will and testament, and even admits a death-wish to her.
The return of the father of her childhood who she was close to seems increasingly elusive. Meanwhile, at an uncertain time between them, a tragic turn of events ensures this becomes impossible. Gaughan describes her reaction to this and what subsequently occurs with an admirable clinical detachment, acuteness, attention to detail and undeniable power.
A move to Amsterdam to study follows, a form of running from her grief. But her studies do not go well and, casting around for meaning and new relationships, she moves to LA. While there she uses websites to connect with older men. These dates are increasingly transactional, the young Gaughan going along with all they entail while not questioning her motivations too deeply, even as she is still clearly haunted by her past.
Gaughan’s story is a harsh one, and at times makes for a ruthless account. But it is also a story of resilience and survival, of pluck in the face of adversity, and is very well told, notable for its attention to detail, vivid language and descriptive power.
Midway into the narrative, Gaughan re-analyses her troubled adolescence, seeing the advent of her own depression beginning in her teens. Therapy and medication do little to help her suffering, and she lives this time with a new morbidity that enters her thinking, a desire to die.
Adulthood initially offers a respite from the worst of depression’s impact, and she is, for a while, able to move on with her life, the narrative revisiting events from the perspective of her mental health experience. But now we see her in Amsterdam “slipping” into low mood, accurately and vividly describing the morass that is depression.
She returns Stateside, drinking even more than before, another acting out of her self-destructive impulse. Inevitably reaching rock bottom, she turns to Alcoholics Anonymous for help, detailing meetings acutely, and also the nature and experience of alcoholism. Its struggle is vividly portrayed.
There is a powerful depiction of breakdown and its ramifications, of the details of admission to a “psych ward” and day-to-day life there, its threat of violence, sudden intense friendships, degradations, petty humiliations, sadness and tedium accurately, irreverently, vividly and poignantly described.
Gaughan has written a graphic, explicit, often visceral memoir that engulfs the reader in its potent themes of mental distress, bereavement, alcohol abuse and sex. There are no simple answers given in this narrative, no pat reassurances or resolution, and it can be an unrelenting litany of the troubles indicated in the title at times; but Gaughan’s story, and the strength of her writing in telling it, demands attention throughout.
We see her gradually gain insight and realise she has to choose between being someone who wishes to live fully or one who wishes not to live at all. Later, meeting a kindly therapist, she is able to say: “I finally feel heard.”
With this book, Marise Gaughan is sure to make her voice heard even more.
