I recently listened to the audiobook of Poor by Katriona O’Sullivan. I became aware of Poor via social media clips of Katriona speaking on Women’s Hour, and also an emotional video she posted during her stay at a writers residency.
Poor piqued my interest for a number of reasons:
- I am getting more frequently drawn to childhood memoirs. After every three or four books of fiction, I now find myself wanting a non-fiction read and it is increasingly becoming a memoir of someone’s difficult or chaotic life and overcoming adversity, addiction, abuse etc. In recent years that has been I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry, and The House of My Mother by Shari Franke. These alone detail child abuse, eating disorders, drink and drug addiction and escaping a cult.
- I felt a pull towards Poor because of my experiences as a foodbank volunteer. By its very nature, we are helping poor people week in, week out. However, often we only see a brief glimpse into their life and their welfare. We check their needs, pack their food and wish them well until we see them again. We have to tread a fine line between being friendly and compassionate, and not prying beyond the ways in which we can help them in that moment – we have neither the expertise or the resource beyond emergency food parcels and signposting other welfare services.
- Honestly… I had 7 hours of listening time left on my Spotify, and Poor came in at 6 hours 48 minutes. It was absolutely perfect timing in my steadfast belief that books choose you at the right time.
- Read on, or skip to the penultimate paragraph, for another reason.
Reviewing memoirs
Having said that I’ve read a number of personal memoirs in the last few years, I haven’t reviewed any of them here. I think it is because I’m conscious that with a lot of people’s stories of hardship, many of the people connected to them are still alive, and anyone is capable of finding things on the internet with the right Google search. I’m not sure if I feel comfortable reviewing material that has had such a huge impact on people’s lives – who am I to add my two cents worth when it’s real life and not fiction? I’m probably overthinking it, but it often plagues me. I haven’t really written a memoir review since I read Tara Westover’s Educated years ago. I thought Poor was a great book, and so I do want to push through the clunky, clumsy feelings I have and talk about it some more.
Poor by Katriona O’Sullivan
Poor moves between the UK and Ireland, as Katriona grows up in Coventry, Birmingham and Dublin. Some of her earliest memories are of her parents drink and drug abuse, the house a stinking dirty mess, and her and her siblings unwashed and hungry. There are so many difficult and raw moments in the book. In its audiobook form, read by Katriona herself, you hear her voice break and wobble several times.
There were a lot of moments and imagery in the book that vividly stood out for me. Katriona’s teachers helping her to understand how to wash and change her underwear or giving her food. Being in trouble for not having a pen, when her parents have used it as a drugs pipe. Being sent to the shops to buy Milky Bars so her parents could use the foil to cook drugs.
I felt a deep sadness that I knew there would be rape and sexual abuse, and my lack of surprise when it happened. After all, how could these vulnerable children ever have protected themselves in the environment they found themselves in?
I am becoming increasingly familiar with reading the cycle of addiction, getting clean, then relapsing. It often is truly relentless for years and years. Trying to break a generational cycle is so difficult, not least when the odds are stacked so much against you in terms of social and economic factors. When Katriona gets a flat, she tries hard to keep it clean and take pride in it. When a teacher encourages her back to school to get her GCSEs, she returns. In both instances she is still so young and with next to no role models to encourage her or any feelings of self-worth. It was difficult to hear her struggle with both of these opportunities.
When she begins an access course for Trinity, she tries hard to study while juggling responsibilities of work and parenting. I was really rooting for her, wanting her to overcome the oppressive weight of just how hard it was going to be. When she nearly gave up a week before exams, it felt like a similar cycle of addiction, sober, relapse. However, for every knock and set back, she works her way back, and with it, her self worth grows stronger.
Stand out moments
There was a line in Poor which really resonated with me. Katriona says, “Dehumanising the vulnerable is a great way to excuse yourself from helping them.” For her, this included the lack of care and support from paramedics to her overdosed father, and the way teenage mothers are treated. For me, it rang incredibly true for a lot of the clients we see visiting at foodbank. Many are refugees and migrants, homeless and addicts. A lot of the language and political rhetoric surrounding their circumstances is negative and nasty. People make assumptions. Labels stick and are hard to shake.
Other moments within the book that stuck in my brain came within the epilogue. O’Sullivan observes that we all love a rags to riches story. It made think about story arcs and character evolution that we, the reader, go on when we read stories of all kinds, but particularly in memoirs of people that have had difficult lives. Perhaps this is why I am now finding myself more drawn to reading them. I see the arc unfold with people in real life not just fiction. Never giving up on the ability of the relentless cycles of abuse and addiction being broken. Seeing people who have lived through extraordinary hardship survive, and then thrive.
Finally, and as usual, it’s a point for the language nerd in me. I loved Katriona O’Sullivan addressing the word poor itself. She notes how the title of the book is on purpose – she wants it to get a reaction. She points out that poor is the most visceral word. Words like disadvantaged and underprivileged simply do not get the same reaction – they attempt to sanitise what they really mean, and I was really struck by that. Words matter, and the words we choose can have a big impact.
