Biography - Murphy, Lois Barclay (1902-2003): An article from: Contemporary Authors
by Maura Murphy
Category: Biography & Autobiography

"Murphy's skillful storytelling and optimistic spirit give even the grimmest moments of her difficult life story levity in this hopeful, spunky sister to Angela's Ashes."- Publishers Weekly Maura Murphy's memoir of life in Ireland and beyond resonates with the people, places, and struggles of an almost forgotten generation. Born "chronically ugly and cross as a briar" into a poor, rural homestead in 1920s Ireland, Maura faced adversity from birth. She grew up in the bogs of the Irish countryside and left school at fourteen for Dublin, working in service there until her marriage to a hardworking but hard-drinking womanizer. Poverty stricken and hoping to find a better life for her five young children, she left Ireland with her family for 1950s Birmingham, England. But life doesn't always change when places do, and Maura's fear that she'd be "waked" at Doyles bar upon her death is funny but dead serious. Her voice is feisty and fearless, and she needed to be all those things to survive an extraordinary series of privations and abuses. And now, seventy-five and having survived her childhood, recovered from cancer, and left her marriage of fifty years, Maura has finally recorded the story of her life. Don't Wake Me at Doyles is the compelling account of a life set against by bad odds and worse luck: a memoir of survival and success in the face of the limits of class, education, nationality, religion, gender, and even health. A fearlessly honest writer, Maura invites us into her world, through her destructive marriage, and the birth of her nine children, and towards a life-or-death choice that would change her forever. Told with biting wit, Don't Wake Me at Doyles is a personal story of one woman's endurance, and the remarkable memoir of an ordinary woman's extraordinary life.