Things My Mother Never Told Me

Product Description

In his acclaimed & much-loved memoir And When Did You Last See Your Father? Blake Morrison's mother remains a mysterious, shadowy figure. One of the many things that Kim Morrison never told her son was that she was born Agnes O' Shea, one of twenty children in an Irish family; he barely met his Irish relations; till her death he never knew that she was (and remained at heart) a Catholic. This is her startling & heart-wrenching story
- & a son's search to uncover the truth about the pretty, reserved & remarkable Kerry girl who qualified as a doctor in Dublin in 1942, worked as an obstetric surgeon in British hospitals throughout the war, & then reinvented herself as a conventional English wife & mother. At the heart of the book is a passionate wartime love affair seen through the frank, funny, furious letters his parents wrote during their stormy courtship. Painfully honest, unusual, a new kind of memoir, Things My Mother Never Told Me paints an unforgettable portrait of a quiet, determined heroine for our times, but also brilliantly evokes a vivid, surprising picture of life & love in WWII, the obstacles they faced, the way rules were broken by even the nicest of girls, the jealousy of one doctor (his father) who was stuck in army camps far from the front treating syphilis & other everyday horrors. & at the same time an extraordinary anatomy of love & marriage. Against her husband's wishes, Kim went on working as a GP & doctor after the war & for the rest of her life
- her one rebellion.