I decided to read Sinéad O’Connor’s memoir Rememberings after being reminded of her music via a playlist shared with me. I remember reading reporting about the book and extracts when it was released, and was interested in reading it, but had lingered on my list of books to read.
The book feels like it is made up of two halves. The first part covers O’Connor’s childhood and early career, up until the fallout following her appearance on “Saturday Night Live” where she tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II. This includes part of the book explores her fractured and abusive relationship with her mother, being sent to Grianán Training Centre in response to her shoplifting, her early music career, recording her debut album while pregnant, and the rapid rise associated with the success of Nothing Compares 2 U.
The second part covers the rest of O’Connor’s career. This includes a reflection on her various albums, her challenges with mental health, her experiences with drugs, her exploration of different religions, discussion of encounters with famous people, such as Mohammad Ali, and having four children with four fathers. The second part is a bit patchy, as she had a breakdown and struggled to remember anything much afterwards.
The reason I haven’t written much about what happened between 1992 and 2015 is that in August 2015, after I’d written the first part of this book, I had an open-surgery radical hysterectomy in Ireland followed by a total breakdown.
I had gotten as far as the Saturday Night Live story, but I did not write anything else for the four years it took me to recover from the breakdown, and by the time I’d recovered, I was unable to remember anything much that took place before it.
Source: Rememberings by Sinéad O’Connor
Whether it be choosing to shave her head after being told to be more feminine, being encouraged to terminate her first child by record executives, tearing up a picture of Pope John Paul II or escaping a pillow fight with Prince, it feels that the book was largely a cathartic effort to reclaim the narrative of O’Connor’s life. This was all brought to a head with her postscript written to her father in which she links her mental illness to being hit in the head by a train door at the age of a 11.
All in all, Rememberings is equal part sad and funny, maybe because through it all she was able to survive. Its fractured and rambling nature reminded me a little of Tony Cohen’s somewhat incomplete memoir. Listening to O’Connor’s reading (via Borrowbox) also helped make the book real, especially when she would often laugh at the humour and absurdity associated with various situations. Although not necessarily seeking sympathy, Remembering provides a peek behind the curtain.
REVIEW: Rememberings (Sinéad O’Connor) by Aaron Davis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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