Mary O'Rourke set to launch memoir

The day after losing her Dáil seat in last year’s general election, Mary O’Rourke sat down at home in Athlone and started dictating the story of her life into a tape recorder.

“I’m good at talking,” she explains. “There’s nothing more spontaneous than the spoken word.”

The result of those tape recordings - a book called ‘Just Mary’ - will be launched in Dublin tomorrow (Thursday) and at the Shamrock Lodge Hotel in Athlone from 6.30pm on Sunday.

The memoir is being published by Gill and Macmillan, and the publisher describes it as “frank, newsworthy and fun.”

Mary has her own description. “It’s not high and mighty,” she states. “It won’t get the posh reviews, the ones that want you to be doing something ‘grand’. It’s not. How could it be grand? I wasn’t reared grand and I didn’t live my life grand. It’s a very ordinary, everyday book but interesting, I think.”

It’s Friday morning and, fuelled by tea and a scone, the former Fianna Fáil Minister is in typically engaging form.

Over the course of this interview she talks about not being able to please everyone (“I’d say there’s loads that hate my guts and loads that love me to bits”) and reveals her intention to work on a very different book project next year.

She also discusses why she “didn’t grieve” when she was not returned to the Dáil in February 2011.

“I guess my time had come,” she says of the election. “So many of us knew going in that we hadn’t a chance. But you don’t think about that, you try to put your best foot forward, put up your face, and do your best for your party. And (Fianna Fáil politicians) were retiring all around us, like flies.

“But, anyway, I enjoyed the campaign and I’m so appreciative to the voters all over the constituency who, for so many years, kept great faith with me. You don’t please everyone, you never do. I’d say there’s loads that hate my guts and loads that love me to bits. So you take the good with the bad.”

The night of the election was the starting point for her book.

“I came home the night I lost the seat and they were all there, my family and the people who had worked for me. They went home that night but my son Feargal wanted to stay. I said, ‘No, I’m quite happy on my own.’

“So I sat there and said ‘I’m going to write a book’. I’m going to write about my life in politics and my home life and I’m going to interact the two. I started the next day, I think.

“I didn’t grieve at all for the seat. It was the most amazing thing. I just said, listen, I have lost my husband. I have lost my brother Brian (Lenihan) Snr. I lost my brother, Paddy. I lost my nephew, Brian. When you have big personal losses like that, a loss of a seat is such a small thing.”

Describing the process of working on the book, she says: “My AM time is my best time, so I’d get up in the morning and do it. Maybe put on the kettle, have a big mug of tea and start to talk. I talked my life into the tape recorder and I located a lovely woman who typed for me from the tapes. I had put an ad in the Westmeath Independent to say ‘wanted: person for typing tapes of confidential material’ and I must have got 40 replies to it.”

Gill and Macmillan then provided an editor who helped to structure the chapters of the book.

“It’s my language coming through. It’s my thoughts,” she says. “In fact, Mary McAleese called me up last night from Rome. The publisher sent her a copy because she’s going to launch it in Dublin, and she said: ‘It’s as if you were sitting there, talking to me.’ I thought that was a nice little accolade.”

Mary has long been known for her frank and forthright views. Her son Aengus read the book and recently ‘tweeted’ a prediction that it would cause “a stir” when it reaches the bookshops on Friday.

“I would have insights into people, and insights into situations, which might not have caught the observation of the media of the day, and I think they’d be interesting,” she comments.

The book covers milestones such as her brother Brian Lenihan’s bid for the presidency, the Eircom sell-off, the so-called ‘St Valentine’s Day Massacre’ when Albert Reynolds took power, and party tensions in the run up to the most recent election.

Pivotal figures in Irish politics such as Charlie Haughey, Garret FitzGerald, Pádraig Flynn and Bertie Ahern are discussed. She also describes the difficulties of balancing her busy career with raising a family.

Did she learn anything new about herself while working on ‘Just Mary’?

“I learned quite a lot. We all regret things in life but that’s futile if you don’t learn from them. If you do learn from them it’s a good thing to look back.

“I found that you are best to go with your personal wishes with regard to a dilemma in which you’re involved. If you have an instinct about it, go with your instinct. It usually doesn’t let you down.”

Were there moments in political life that she would do differently if given the chance?

“Ah no, because life goes on with twists and turns,” she replies.

“Who knows, if I had said or done something different what would another person have said or done? I’m beginning to sound like Edith Piaf - ‘je ne regrette rien’ - but it’s not quite that way.

“You live your life and if you can learn from it as you go along that learning will feed into your instinct for the next decision you have to make.”

On Friday she will appear on RTE’s ‘The Late Late Show’ and, after the launches in Dublin and Athlone, there will be book signings in 18 towns between now and the end of November. She has also started writing the advice column in the Irish Independent’s Weekend magazine.

“They approached me out of the blue and asked me to do (the advice column),” she says. “I tend to shoot from the hip, but I suppose that’s better. I’m not too saccharine, you know?”

In the new year, she plans to begin work on a new book about the Gunning family which owned a house in Hodson Bay (now the Hodson Bay Hotel) before it was purchased by her father.

“The Gunning family used to live in Castlecoote House in Roscommon before they bought the Hodson Bay. The daughters of the family were the fabulous Gunning sisters. One married the Earl of Coventry and one married the Duke of Devonshire. They were an amazing family and very little was written about them.”

All of this points to a busy couple of months ahead, but Mary is not complaining. “I love it,” she concludes. “I am in a good phase of my life and thank God for that.”

* The Athlone launch of ‘Just Mary’ takes place on Sunday evening, October 21, from 6.30pm in the Shamrock Lodge Hotel. There will be live music and refreshments. The book will be launched by the Garda Ombudsman Commissioner, Carmel Foley.