Nicola Barry's Background

Nicola Barry grew up in well-to-do Murrayfield, Edinburgh. Her father was a hopsital consultant, her mother was medically trained, her brothers boarders at public school. But behind the closed doors of their imposing family home, her mother was drinking herself to death. A beautiful, quirky woman, this is the story of how Monica Barry became a prisoner to alcohol and a prisoner in her own home, her addiction slowly sucking the life out of her. And how - with her father at work, and her brothers away at school - Nicola spent a lot of her childhood as her mother''s unofficial carer: hauling her from the bath when she was too drunk to function and running errands to buy her booze.

The Story and Its Themes

Full of harrowing incidents, and warmed by a touching, bleak humour, this is the powerful story of how a mother drank herself to death and how alcohol destroyed a family. And of how Nicola battled with her own alcoholism but, determined to throw off her mother''s legacy, came through - a survivor.