‘Are you going into town today?’ she says, which annoys me because it’s something she says all the time, having forgotten she said it before, and I say, ‘Jesus, Mum, not this again,’ and she says, ‘What again?’ and I say, ‘Town is shut down,’ and while she can see I am upset and wants not to upset me like this, she is also wounded by my tone, and I am ashamed then and can only look at my plate, and I decide not to bring up what I intended to bring up, about the past, and about my need for her to apologise for it.
Gavin is spending the quarantine in a small flat in south Dublin with his eighty-year-old mother, whose mind is slowly slipping away. He has lived most of his adult life abroad and has returned home to care for her and to write a novel. But he finds that all he can write about is her.
Moving through a sequence of remembered rooms—the ‘cells’—Gavin unspools an intimate story of his upbringing and early adulthood: feeling out of place in the insular suburb in which he grew up, the homophobic bullying he suffered at school, his brother’s mental illness and drug addiction, his father’s sudden death, his own devastating diagnosis, his struggles and triumphs as a writer, and above all, always, his relationship with his mother. Her brightness shines a light over his childhood, but her betrayal of his teenage self leads to years of resentment and disconnection. Now, he must find a way to reconcile with her, before it is too late.
Written with unusual frankness and urgency, Cells is at once an uncovering of filial love and its limits, and a coming to terms with separation and loss.
“In its ungarnished prose and loud inner voice, Cells stitches raw memories with new meanings to craft a brilliant composite of a son’s unexamined relationship with his mother. The memoir pairs McCrea’s unspoken shame with his private sanctums to show how it’s these cells—physical or fantastical—where we sometimes finally find the words to speak.”
Nathan Smith, The Saturday Paper
“This is a book that brims with stored-up pain—and with a very particular kind of courage. For all its dark and sometimes brutal honesty, what the reader is going to remember here is the way that McCrea’s prose fights on through his hurt to bring home pages that seem lit from within by love and beauty. A memoir that is as rewarding as it is undoubtedly challenging.”
Neil Bartlett, author of Ready To Catch Him Should He Fall and Address Book
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“[Q]uite fearlessly, McCrae lays it all bare … [Cells is] brave; brilliantly written; almost unbearably raw and frank; but also tender and sweet.”
Peta Stavelli, NZ Booklovers
Praise for The Sisters Mao:
“McCrea’s portrait of Jiang Qing is a masterpiece of characterization: at once monstrous and pitiable. The Sisters Mao is dazzlingly clever and original.”
Antonia Senior, The Times
Praise for The Sisters Mao:
“The Sisters Mao is a spectacular novel, utterly enthralling and insightful; every voice is penetrating, dazzling. In spite of the setting, it is full of relevance for these times; it manages to be both historically authentic and thrillingly contemporary. Gavin is a writer of extraordinary talent, and I cannot think of a kind of reader who I would not recommend this novel to.”
Sara Baume, author of Spill Simmer Falter Wither
Praise for The Sisters Mao:
“McCrea has conducted exceptionally deep research to conjure up nuanced, authentic portrayals of the worlds of the book—but the text carries his knowledge lightly, supporting rather than dominating the story. The Sisters Mao is the best sort of historical fiction; one that illuminates the contemporary moment with great insight. Profoundly brilliant, it will no doubt be a huge contender on the literary awards circuit, but also one that is pushed feverishly from reader to reader with excitement.”
Helen Cullen, The Irish Times
Praise for Mrs Engels:
“[Gavin McCrea] deserves praise for his command of voice in Mrs Engels… This is the best kind of historical fiction—oozing period detail, set in a milieu populated by famous figures and events about which much is known, but seen through the eyes of a central character who, due to her illiteracy, left no ready access to her experience in the form of letters or diary entries: a rich and accomplished first novel.”
Lucy Scholes, The Independent
