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Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?: hilarious, tender, absurd, delightful and charming Nina Stibbe
Seamas O'Reilly
Biography: general, Prose: non-fiction
Froman Observer columnist and Twitter sensation, the story of a boy growing up in a family bonded by loss, love and mockery, set against the backdrop of Northern Ireland in the 1990s.
THE IRISH TIMES NO. 1 BESTSELLER
AN POST BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR
'Gorgeous' Pandora Sykes
'A rare and beautiful book' Marian Keyes 'Tender, sad and side-splittingly funny' Annie MacManus
'A delight' Dara O Briain
Seamas O'Reilly's mother died when he was five, leaving him, his ten brothers and sisters and their beloved father in their sprawling bungalow in rural Derry. It was the 1990s; the Troubles were a background rumble (most of the time), and Seamas at that point was more preoccupied with dinosaurs, Star Wars and the actual location of heaven than the political climate.
Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? is a book about a family of argumentative, loud, musical, sarcastic, grief-stricken siblings, shepherded into adulthood by a man whose foibles and reticence were matched only by his love for his children and his determination that they would flourish. It is the moving, often amusing and completely unsentimental story of a boy growing up in a family bonded by love, loss and fairly relentless mockery.
'A heartfelt tribute to an alarmingly large family held together by a quietly heroic father' Arthur Mathews, co-creator of Father Ted and Toast of London
'Not only hilarious, tender, absurd, delightful and charming, but written with such skill as to render it unforgettable' Nina Stibbe
Praise for Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?: hilarious, tender, absurd, delightful and charming Nina Stibbe
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I cannot stress enough how much I love this funny, adorable memoir. Not only hilarious, tender, absurd, delightful and charming, but written with such skill as to render it unforgettable. I now can't wait to see the TV series and/or to become Seamas's best friend
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Grotesquely funny
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Tender, sad and side-splittingly funny, this is the unforgettable story of how a boy with ten siblings and no mother grew into a man. It's a love letter to Northern Ireland and all the children, dogs, priests and struggling parents that live there. I adored it
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An almost improbable true story of an Irish man bringing up eleven (yes, eleven) children on his own, after his wife dies. Seamas is the ninth of these "half-orphans" and he writes about his childhood and grief with such pathos and wit - even the chapter on his father's love of dogs is exquisite. A gorgeous memoir
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I enjoyed this immensely. I laughed a lot (often out loud). A heartfelt tribute to an alarmingly large family held together by a quietly heroic father
Seamas O'Reilly
Seamas O'Reilly is a columnist for the Observer and writes about media and politics for the Irish Times, New Statesman, Guts and VICE. He shot to a kind-of prominence with a range of online endeavours including 'Remembering Ireland', a parody of Irish nostalgia sites, which featured entirely invented moments from Irish history. In 2016, he posted a long Twitter thread about the effects Brexit would have on Northern Ireland, which led to his first political writing for the New Statesman. Later on that year, his exasperated reviews of the novels of erstwhile footballer and manager Steve Bruce led to his participation in events with Guardian Football Weekly and various others. His most recent viral sensation was a thread about the time he inadvertently found himself on ketamine while in a room serving drinks to his boss's boss's boss and the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese. Seamas lives in Hackney with his family.
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