Momma May Be Mad: A Memoir

by Kerry Neville

Momma May Be A Memoir is an inventive and striking memoir about motherhood, madness, and the grace of second and third chances. Kerry Neville shares the story of how she was caught in the perfect storm of bipolar disorder, anorexia, and alcoholism when her children were young and her marriage failing and how she found her way back to joy and hope. Electric shock therapy, hospitalizations, and even an exorcism were desperate, if failed, lifelines. But even in that dark chaos, she held fast to an abiding belief in love and fought to regain her own life and her life with her children.

Genres: Memoir

268 pages, Paperback

Published October 21, 2025

Reviews

[Literary Redhead · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have breathlessly awaited the author's memoir, and it is astonishing! Her story is etched in blood like that striking cover, with cut flesh, suicide attempts, and electroshock therapy that erased her memory with whacking jolts to her ill brain.

Bipolar disorder, alcoholism, anorexia, self-mutilation. That she survived it all is a miracle. More miraculous is that she is thriving today with loving relationships with her children, family, and many many friends. And as a revered writer and university interim chair and associate professor, including time spent as a Fulbright Scholar Ireland 2018/University of Limerick.

“It’s easy to get lost,” she once said at a 12 Step meeting in Ireland. "As I talked about my desperate drinking days, it was as if I was telling the story of another Kerry—that is, the story of a fear-full woman, intent on wrecking herself in despair’s ditch, and dead by forty by active or passive suicide.

"My recounting of that Kerry at this meeting? She was a remote wraith, no longer dogging me with her doomsday threats. What does she now say? Thank you for saving me. I honor her and have compassion for her: she didn’t know how to love herself, how to use her voice, how to take risks in this world. She does now. Most days, anyway."

Don't miss this dazzling story, one of the most poignant, luminous, and hope-filled memoirs I've ever read.

And to Kerry: "Go raibh mile maith agat!"

Thanks to the author and publisher for the advance review copy. Opinions are mine.

[Eric Mueller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scan my brain while reading this and you'll see bright, vibrant colors. In a time where almost everything is measured in how cozy it is, Momma May Be Mad is alive, awake and affectionate. As someone who considers reading to be "like the gym for your brain," this is like a training session that hurts so good. The reader is challenged, the reader is taught to, and it asks the reader to listen, really listen. I love that. The human experience is strong and rich, sometimes cruel and impossible. This book reminds us of that time and time again

Thank goodness I read the physical book over audio. This story is so dynamic and lively, constantly on the move. There are broader sections, but the narrator is not afraid to hop around in space and time in order to tell us the story in the exact correct way. One page we're in childhood, on the next, we're seeing an "unwinnable" adult situation, and on many pages we see a version of life that flutters with hope.

I loved the connection the author shared with family. To see her not just as mother and wife but daughter, artist, and with a successful career is the range I really needed. As someone who's been without a mother for a few years now, I love seeing authentic maternal experiences and expressions, even the worry. What a gift.

This felt oldschool yet modern. Like Saint Augustine meets Joan Dideon. The result is something more urgent. This does deal with heavy subjects like mental health, disordered eating, harm, relationship dyanmics, and self loathing, but they're handled so well and not sensationalized that I think this is great representaiton for those dynamics and more.

Ihighly recomend this to anyone who made it this far, especially women, younger folks, and people who've struggled with mental health.

[Helen Foster · Rating 5 out of 5]

If Sylvia Plath had survived, she might have written a
memoir like this.

[Roberts Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Momma May Be Mad by Kerry Neville is an unflinching and exquisitely rendered memoir that confronts the inheritance of instability both familial and emotional with a voice that is as lyrical as it is raw. Neville writes from the fault lines of love and madness, crafting a narrative that resists sentimentality while remaining profoundly intimate.

Across its pages, madness becomes a mirror, not a verdict a way of understanding what it means to survive, to nurture, to grieve, and to forgive. Neville’s storytelling carries the quiet ache of lived experience, moving fluidly between memory and reckoning. Her prose possesses a clarity that borders on poetry, illuminating the spaces between mother and daughter, past and present, survival and surrender.

What makes Momma May Be Mad extraordinary is its refusal to simplify the messiness of family or the fragility of mind. Instead, Neville transforms these elements into a narrative of reclamation one that affirms the self without erasing the pain that shaped it. In doing so, she joins the ranks of writers like Mary Karr and Jeannette Walls, crafting memoir not as confession, but as resurrection.

A brave, unsettling, and ultimately redemptive work, Momma May Be Mad reminds us that love even when fractured is still love.

[Sandra Worsham · Rating 5 out of 5]

The new release from Kerry Beth Neville, Momma May Be Mad, is a memoir that I will read again and again and that I will not forget for a long time. How courageous an author Kerry is! What a difficult book this must have been for her to write! The writing of this book required that she dig into a painful past, a past that she would probably prefer to leave behind and not live through again. Yet, in order to remember, in spite of many electric shock treatments, she had to go through her old medical records, talk to friends and family who went through those times with her, and remember…and remember…and remember. I was deeply moved by the continuous love and support she received from those special children who call her “Momma.” The first half of the book is dark and contains those painful aches that all of us can identify with in one way or another—we dive down with her--, but the second half is bright and reassuring, for she allows us to follow along with her to her heart’s love, Ireland. The descriptions of the green hills and the water are breathtaking. And her love for the people there, and the music—how healing for the soul!—both the author’s and the reader’s as well. This is a five-star read.

[Lisa Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is courageous and groundbreaking. The beginning of the memoir is disjointed, like the author as she navigates multiple challenges—anorexia, alcoholism, suicide attempts, and bipolar disorder. I almost wanted to give up on it but I'm so glad I did not. After a doctor (nicknamed Dr. Disregard) labels her "hopeless", she resolves to get better. Through sheer determination and some better doctors, she begins a journey that will culminate in her reclaiming her career as a writer, scholar, and professor. I was cheering her on as I read the book! The style of writing changes as she begins to heal so stay with it. You will be rewarded with gorgeous and lyrical writing.

[Dani Janae · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who is both an alcoholic in recovery and a person with bipolar disorder, this memoir hit me in all the right places. Imaginative, contemplative, and with stunning prose, Neville gets at one of our biggest endeavors: crafting the life you want for yourself, one you can be proud of. I loved every moment of reading this.

[Rachel E · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a powerful memoir about recovery and memory and hope. It made me cry and it made me smile. Kerry's journey is incredible and inspirational. Her writing is gorgeous. It is more than just a memoir. She ties in literary references and scientific tidbits. It's very impressive.

[Maureen Stanton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deeply moving and beautifully written.