Ma, I've Got Meself Locked Up in the Mad House

Ma... #5

by Martha Long

Martha is now in her thirties. Her daughter has left home and she is lonely and vulnerable. The hard knocks have taken their toll on her health, and as she looks into the years still lying ahead of her, she shakes her head, feeling she hasn't the heart or the strength to go on.

As she teeters on the brink of a nervous breakdown, a phone call summons ghosts from the past. She discovers that one of the family is dead and the others need her help. Martha returns and when she comes face to face with the evil, psychotic Jackser, she can no longer suppress the nightmares of her childhood.

A suicide attempt sees her admitted to the 'mad house', where a hunger strike takes her even nearer to death. But finally she sees a chink of light at the end of the tunnel. Could love in an unexpected form pull her back from the brink?

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir

444 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2011

About the author

Martha Long was born in Dublin in the early 1950s and still lives there today. She calls herself a ‘middle-aged matron’ and has successfully reared three children. The Bookseller described her as a ‘truly gifted storyteller’ & Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, compared her to Charles Dickens. Her seventh and final book in the bestselling Ma series will be published by Mainstream Publishing in the UK, Australia and New Zealand in September 2013. Her first book was published in North America by Seven Stories Press in November 2012.

Reviews

[Sandra Dillon · Rating 1 out of 5]

I like the first three books, maybe she should have stopped there. Lots of moaning and whining and never being happy with her lot. The world doesn't owe anyone anything. Martha has a lot of very patient friends running around to assist her. I found her attitude very ungrateful. There are times when she actually thinks it is funny to bully patients in the hospital to get her own way. Despite being able to afford to send her daughter to a private school she seems to think it was ok to go shoplifting when her money ran low. And stealing from the hospital that she recovered in!

The reader is familiar with the hell Martha went through in her childhood...she seems to have landed on her feet with the amazing opportunities people gave her. She even has her own home...yet she never seems to stop complaining and even criticizes the very people who have turned cartwheels to help her e.g. Sister Eleanor. There were thousands more like Martha in Ireland in the 1950's and they didn't have such good fortune. I won't be reading any further...some people are never happy no matter what they achieve.

[Alan Daly · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read Martha's first book and enjoyed it, my wife recently bought this one for me as she remembered I had liked it. I thought to myself "oh, she wrote a second one?" but I soon realised that this was not book number two, it was book five of SIX! How much can she have to say?

Anyhow, the book bugged me from start to finish, not necessarily the content but the way it was written, I would love to have a version of this in Word or a PDF so that I could do a word search for how many times she uses the verb 'roared', it seems that every person she encountered was incapable of merely speaking in a regular tone (if you were to take the word literally). The pace of the book is very slow, it took me an age to read (probably because I was annoyed throughout).


It really wasn't for me.

[Julie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not for me.
I understand it was based on fact.... Mmm...found it all a bit whingy to be honest. In my opinion, didn't come across as a particularly endearing character.
Read this out of sync though so maybe that made a difference.
🤨

[Anthony Flynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written. Two more books to read

[Kay Castaneda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Book Five of the "Martha" books. The author continues her story with her daughter grown up and leaving home to live with her father in England. Martha built her life around her daughter for the past seventeen years. The role of mother allowed Martha to live a normal life, far different from her young years as a poor street kid of the slums of Dublin. Where little Martha was abused emotionally, physically and sexually by her step-father in addition to suffering at the hands of strangers, Martha now lives in a middle-class suburb of Dublin. She has everything she needed and wished for as a little girl and teenager; safety, security, food, shelter and a child to love and who loves her in return. Being a mother becomes Martha's best role in her life. Until her daughter leaves home and causes a mental breakdown and suicide attempt. Now Martha is a patient in a mental institution for several years. She has friends and admirers there, but she is safe and free to continue her personal growth. She does not give in to despair. When Martha is ready to leave the hospital, she dates one of the medical assistants who took care of her. She falls in love with him, her "beautiful Russian" and become a couple. The ending of Book Five contains a surprise and readers will certainly want to pick up her next installment of the Martha Series.

[Nicky Forrester · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've loved all of Martha's books so far but was pretty disappointed with this one. It didn't feel to me that this actually needed to be another book to be honest.

This book was generally about Martha being institutionalised again and her daily struggles. I didn't find it interesting, it told me nothing new about Martha and really just felt like this was a book produced just for the sake of it. It went on and on and round in circles, I even found myself skimming over pages to get through to any new developments (and I generally don't give up on books once I've started reading them).

It was good to get a little insight into Martha's life as a mother and a small part of her home life with Bonzo the dog and I'm glad that a stranger from her past makes contact at the end but I just feel the content of this book could've been covered in a couple of chapters in another book with something more substantial.

I have another 2 books to go in the Martha 'Ma' series, I hope they are not like this.

[NorikoY · Rating 1 out of 5]

What happened to the guy who gave her 500 pounds?
Anyway, her recovery process was... too smooth. Unreal. Ah, Martha, if you can get over depression this easy, you are easily lead. You will have trouble in your life again!

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yet again another brilliant book....I'm starting the next one now!!!

[Emily Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

Martha Martha Martha you’ve done it again. I dont know what im gonna do once I finish this series I cant believe what an incredibly talented writer you are..

This book, the 5th in the ‘Ma’ series is crafted so well in the way it is formatted. We begin with another tragedy in Martha’s life, where she begins dissociating and getting flashbacks to previous bad times in her life. Then we are in ‘the mad house’ for a period of time, where she starts re thinking her life and we get to see Martha trying to understand her inner child. Then we move onto the last 1/3 of the book where we get flashbacks of better times in her life she has had to overcome - essentially the answer to what we missed after book 4. And now that she’s all grown up and in her 30s, the language of this edition was so beautiful some parts so poetic I had to double down read it again.

I did find myself abit upset that we missed so much of Martha’s 20s but I understand the author didn’t want to write about times that were too personal and private as she says in the authors note. This is just very parasocial of me, but Martha Long you’re an incredible survivor ❤️

[Darla Ebert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Martha Long has quite a memory of some awful happenings. It seems she has very little to be happy about even after she became an adult and moved away from her toxic family. I enjoyed the book to a degree but it did leave me feeling depressed. I may read the other memoirs of Martha Long but I have to think long and hard. I got the impression while reading the book that the author is writing this series of memoirs as therapy. Perhaps she felt better after writing each book, of which there are at last four thick tomes, perhaps she was in some way working out her past and her frustrations. However in cutting God out of the equation, as she early on declares, Martha made the decision to depart from, in a deliberate way, the only One who could help her.

[Deborah Sowery-Quinn · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a big gap of time between this book & the previous one in the series; the author alludes to it but does not really explain in any detail. Martha is in her 30s in this installment with a grown daughter, living on her own, still feeling the strangling ties of her family sometimes & still with a lot to deal with as she struggles to maintain independence & health.

[Clare Burnett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another fantastic read by Martha

[Magi · Rating 5 out of 5]

She needed the help to get back to herself. She never lost her sense of humor giving hope for a recovery. Along the way finding a friend.

[Linda Eyman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Again, very depressing.

[Angela Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading a review about this book saying it wasnt that good i thouroughly enjoyed it. Martha had me in stitches her antics & wanting to cry aswell

[Lucie Barber · Rating 4 out of 5]

ok things didn't go so smoothly, but she somehow managed. I didnt agree with her every move, but oh how much I felt for Martha! Until now I feel sorry that the relationship with the first daughter is not more described and open in the next volumes...i have hopes all got sorted in the real life!

[Yassemin]

This was just absolute shit!!!