Trouble

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What to expect

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Marise was nine when she first realised there was trouble, 14 when her Dad tried to end it all, and 23 when he finally succeeded.

In a turmoil of conflicting emotions Marise runs - from Dublin to Amsterdam to Los Angeles, leaving a trail of sex and self-destruction in her wake. Until finally, she finds herself facing what she's become in a California psych ward, a girl imploding through trying to make sense of her father's suicide.

As she retells her unravelling, from child to adult, Marise strips back her identity and her relationship with her father, layer by layer, until she starts to understand how to live with him, years after he has gone.

Written beautifully, with wit and unflinching honesty, Marise has produced one of the most profound coming-of-age memoirs of recent years, a stunning new voice in Irish writing.

(P) Octopus Publishing Group 2022

Critics Review

Raw, brutal and life-affirming - Marise has written a hugely important book that is as entertaining as it is illuminating.
Sara Pascoe
I couldn't put this down. A brave, honest, witty, new Irish voice that has a very bright future ahead of her.
Jade Jordan
Holy cow. I finished it and cried my eyes out. An incredible, beautifully written memoir about humanity, heartbreak and hope.
Lou Sanders
Gripping, funny and heart-wrenchingly relatable. Every time I turned the page I hoped it wouldn't be the last.
Lily O'Farrell, Vulgadrawings
Where so much writing about mental illness is riddled with po-faced earnestness and cliche, Marise Gaughan's take no prisoners approach to craziness, sex and Catholic girlhood is spit-your-tea-out funny.'
Fern Brady
Disarming in its candour, hilarious and harrowing in its depictions of a life shaped by trauma and addiction, Trouble is so much more than a memoir of survival. It is a picaresque journey through the stages of grief; an intimate epic of self-sabotage and self-forgiveness; a no-holds-barred report from the lip of the abyss. How glad I am that Gaughan stepped away in time. Her voice, at once wry, profane and heartfelt, is a gift. She observes with a mordant wit the ways we deceive ourselves in the name of our desires, and reminds us that we are not defined by our pasts, but by the small steps we take every day towards our ideal selves.
Stephen Kelman, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Pigeon English
An unflinching account of a young woman's alternating attempts to survive her father's suicide - or die from it. Marise Gaughan writes with heart-rending precision of the dynamics between fathers and daughters, as well as the still more troubling sexual one between older men and damaged young women. This is a knife-sharp and defiant story of recovery.
Tanya Shadrick, author of The Cure for Sleep
Marise is a Brillo pad of a writer, spikey and essential.
Alison Spittle
Gaughan's humour is dark, biting, and painfully honest, but it is in the moments when she is being gentler to herself that her words are at their most transcendent.
Irish Independent
Trouble is an outstanding memoir, a text on addiction that gets to the heart of its implicit trauma and complications. Gaughan has a remarkable voice, self-assured yet vulnerable, frank to a staggering degree - and likeable even in her darkest moments.
The Business Post
Blistering...an outstanding memoir
Sunday Business Post
An outstanding text on addiction and girlhood, equal parts vulnerable and witty
The Business Post
Addictive, exhilarating and raw
Daisy Buchanan, author of 'Insatiable'

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