Mother Mother: A poignant journey of friendship and forgiveness

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Loved the characters in the pub she works at too. I can definitely chime with those older Irish men full of yearning and Guinness - I have plenty in my own family Through her groundbreaking career, Annie Mac has paved the way for women in the music industry, inspiring aspiring female DJs, presenters, and musicians to follow their dreams. Her legacy continues to inspire generations to come. But I feel like the thing about feminism is that it’s about having choices and having the power to make choices. For me, doing this, because my career doesn’t suit my life, feels hopefully like a thing that people might think: Maybe I can do that, too; maybe I don’t have to stay in the rat race because it feels like I should; maybe I can do things my way and not follow the path that’s been set for me by the patriarchy.” A lot of the people who have gone in my wake have gone and done big power moves. I do not have that set. It’s not about a power move in the traditional idea of the power move. Maybe it’s a different type of power move, because I’m empowering myself.”

The story (such as it is) follows Orla who has come to London via Cheltenham to live with her best friend, Neema and the members of Neema's brother's band "Shiva". Orla has her own ambitions to write, sing and produce her own music but she finds out fast that there's no easy route to that happening.

I had fallen in love with writing and knew this was a golden opportunity. I left my evening radio show and moved my working day to within school hours. A popular feature is the Annie Mac Mini Mix, an opportunity to showcase various DJs' ability to produce a five-minute mix with other DJs. The Mini mix was also a feature of her previous show on a Thursday night. She was a regular stand-in for Zane Lowe's show before he left the station. In 2009 Annie won the Best Female award at the drum and bass awards for her contribution to the promotion of this genre of music.

It’s so interesting the conflict you have when you do a live radio show. Everything in me [during the interview] was screaming ‘This is going on too long’, because that’s how I’m trained: live radio, I need to play a song. But I didn’t want to stop her, and she was on a roll, she was just going. Your job there, if you can imagine a galloping horse, your job is just to slightly guide them in a direction where they’re going to be touching on subjects people want to hear. That’s all it is.” While the decision feels very self-directed, there was one niggling aspect to leaving the always-on treadmill barrelling along underneath the kind of live radio MacManus had perfected. She is seen as hugely successful as an individual, but also someone who advocates for other women in the industry, female musicians – for example, calling out gender imbalance in festival line-ups – that other, more cautious presenters might shy away from. Gerry blinks, looking at his pint, and says, - we don’t all get the luxury of belonging where we’re born.

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My kids are now aware that their world is unpredictable and that change, when it comes, can upend everything they know. Time will tell whether the pervasive fear of the past two years will have a permanent effect. I can tell you that they are currently happier and more settled than they have ever been. Maybe more resilient, too. The Mess We’re In by Annie Macmanus published May 11th with Wildfire and is described by Sara Cox as ‘beautifully painted, well set up and realistic’.

I am a huge fan of Annie Mac as a DJ and is someone I greatly admire. When I heard she was releasing her debut novel, I could not wait and was so happy to be accepted for this netgalley copy. Mother Mother does not disappoint. When she started the writing course, she found herself like a sponge, soaking up everything the teacher told her. “That whole thing was a revelation. I was the cliched mature student: tell me everything! I want to learn!” By the time she had finished the course, with 35,000 words in the bag, she worked towards a first draft. s highly trusting nature and seeing the best in people, being a bit oblivious and how the relationship with her room mate develops were spot on as a portrait of Irish people. But perhaps there’s only so much time you can spend talking to other people about their own art when you too have something to say.

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She also got tired of some of the brattier behaviour. “Wearing sunglasses in the studio is a warning sign,” she says. She recalls an indie band who came into a late night session “absolutely wasted thinking it would be hilarious to be as rude as possible … Then there was a huge music artist who drank a bottle of wine and went from being really sound to really nasty in an alarming space of time. She called me ‘granny Mac’ for the whole interview and answered my questions in an exaggerated Irish accent. I wish I knew then that I could just stop the interview.” I wonder what our little gathering must look like from her perspective: a girl, blushing with pleasure in the corner of a small, steamy restaurant, surrounded by laughing faces. I wonder if I look comfortable in my skin to her. Does she think I belong here? This is one of those devastatingly simple stories which brilliantly captures the toll that loss and grief takes on a family through the generations. It’s a look at a fairly ordinary, albeit tragic family who have to overcome heartache and addiction - this isn’t a novel with one big defining moment or sudden plot twist, but one that captures the sadness of living with these things every day, and feels all the more powerful for that.