Don't Wake Me At Doyle's: A Memoir - Tapa dura

A septuagenarian Irish matriarch describes her origins in rural 1920s Ireland, struggles to raise nine children in the face of poverty and alcoholism, and the ways in which her underprivileged life reflected her generation's lower class. 15,000 first printing.

Maura Murphy was born in Clongmore, Country Offaly, in 1928. She left Ballybryan National School when she was fourteen with "no qualifications and even fewer prospects." She worked as a domestic servant in various houses in Dublin until she met and married John Murphy, a soldier stationed at Portobello Barracks. The couple moved to Birmingham, England, in 1959 where they reared nine children. They have eleven grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Maura now lives in Birmingham, England, in the West Midlands.