Beginning in the 60's, the tandem narrative unravels the memories of life in a small Irish town - narrated by the Scourge of the title - MDM - and her Mother Siobhán - in a series of flashbacks. It comprises sections of black comedy, nostalgia, memories and epiphanies - that document the personalities, history, and archive of an ordinary family, who through the bastard of disease that the Scourge calls "death by a thousand cuts" becomes cathartic, redemptive, and ultimately uplifting, as we become extraordinary in our ability to cope. It also shines a light on an illness that is rarely discussed in this detail. Written over 4 years, "Scourged" takes the reader on a journey from early diagnosis, the stages as the patient declines, the family's implosion, the morphing of the Scourge from wide eyed child into Enfant Terrible - then through obese depressed recluse, morphing into the creator of Shellshock - One Woman shows . Siobhán has always been my inspiration. The first thing I ever wrote about Siobhán was a short story called "Mothers Day" and following her hospital admission, a play called "Brigids Women" - named for the ward Siobhán spent 7 months in. After a decade of dementia, 6 years of which were spent in a small room in a Nursing Home, and after bravery that was described by medical personnel as "heroic and humbling" Siobhán was called home during a hurricane on the last day of winter, St Brigids Day. Her Months Mind Mass was held 7 weeks later, on Mother's Day. The book has been called groundbreaking and remarkable by a readers panel. I feel my Mother has helped me write it, and that I have given her back her voice, which was sadly silenced, and also given her back her place in the world, which she longed to see. I will use her own artwork - which she painted as a child- on the cover, with her signature.
About the Author: Michelle Dooley Mahon currently resides in her hometown of Wexford, where she has been writing since she was a small child. She has travelled to England, Wales, Germany, Sweden and Spain, cherrypicking jobs, homes and men like a child in a sweetshop. She created a blog called Random Mayhem outlining some of the tamer incidents of her checkered life to date, which garnered so many views they asked her to come out and perform for them. She was then wheeled out at Cacá Milís Cabaret at Wexford Arts Centre where her story "The Haemorrhaging Humourist" ( about a clown who bleeds to death in a cabin on a cross channel ferry) caused gasps of hilarity and shock. Having created a monster with their applause, Michelle then wrote a One Woman Show called "Before I Forget" (a reference to her Mother's Alzheimers which she documents honestly in a way that is harrowing yet hilarious, poignant and nostalgic) She has been described as a philosophical wordsmith. While inflating the helium balloons for her one woman show she took a call from the director of the Kultivera Institute at Kraftverket in Sweden to inform her she had been awarded the Dylan Thomas Literary Residency. She funded her Swedish Sojourn in July by writing and performing another show called Seas Suas which also sold out, which shows there is no accounting for taste and nowt so queer as folk. She opened the Wexford Spiegel Tent at the Wexford Opera Festival on October 22nd which was also her birthday. She called this show - "The Eff Word" - for numerous reasons, but mostly because she was 50 on that day. She also created a page called Alzheimer Association of Ireland on Facebook about her Mother, documenting the implosion of a family dynamic through the ravages of dementia, and a play in 3 acts called Brigid's Women about Siobhan's 7 month stay in a hospital ward called St. Brigids. Siobhán died this year, on St Brigids Day. Scourged - A Memoir, is her debut novel. She lives in Wexford with two dogs called Walter and Ernest.