Thanks for Having Me
Emma Darragh
Thanks for Having Me
Emma Darragh
Mary Anne is painfully aware that she's not a good wife and not a good mother, and is slowly realising that she no longer wants to play either of those roles. One morning, she walks out of the family home in Wollongong, leaving her husband and teenage daughters behind. Wounded by her mother's abandonment, adolescent Vivian searches for meaning everywhere: true crime, boys' bedrooms, Dolly magazine, a six-pack of beer. But when Vivian grows up and finds herself unhappily married and miserable in motherhood, she too sees no choice but to start over. Her daughter Evie is left reeling, and wonders what she could have done to make her mother stay.
Emma Darragh's unflinching, tender and darkly funny debut explores what we give to our families and what we take from them-whether we mean to or not. The stories in Thanks for Having Me are like a shoebox full of old photos: they aren't in chronological order and few are labelled. Looking at a family this way reveals things we don't see when these moments are neatly organised. Except that within these pages are a few moments you wouldn't want to hold up to the light.
Review
Annie Condon
Thanks for Having Me is a novel told in interlinked stories, and even though you might think, ‘I don’t like short stories,’ it’s worth considering that some of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novels – Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout; A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan – are created through a series of stories. Even our own Tim Winton favoured the form in The Turning.
Emma Darragh’s debut follows three women from the same working-class community in Wollongong. Maryanne, a mother in the 1970s, tries to be everything for her two daughters and husband. She works as a nurse, makes lunches for the kids, plus dinner when she gets home. She also tends to the needs of her own parents and suffers in the wake of a family tragedy. But when her two daughters are adolescents in the 1990s, she barely recognises her life, and leaves.
Vivian also finds herself in a situation where her family suddenly feels unrecognisable. As a result, she is furious and copes using alcohol and sex. She works at a string of casual jobs in between hangovers. At 23, Vivian is partnered and pregnant; she’s hoping motherhood will give her some direction. But the repetition of sleepless nights and painful breastfeeding disheartens her. Increasingly distant from her husband, she leaves when her daughter is primary school aged.
This novel is full of complex and interesting women. Despite themes of family trauma, Darragh’s writing and characters can be extremely funny, and the span of the book means that a broad range of readers will relate to the characters and timelines. The stories vary in length, and each reveals some part of the larger picture; part of the joy is piecing it all together. Central to that experience is the skill of the author in depicting the highs and lows of relationships. Memorably, in the present, Evie, a teenager, but possibly the most self-aware character, muses, ‘What if there was a Gumtree for families? Or a Buy Swap Sell?’
This novel is for readers who enjoy writers who make the personal enjoyably political. It’s a wonderful, thought-provoking read.
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