People Like Me by Lynn Ruane: From Tallaght ‘daughter from hell’ to Senator

Ruane’s story of how she escaped her fate through education is well worth telling

Lynn Ruane with her daughters, Jaelynne and Jordanne. Photograph: Cyril Byrne

Lynn Ruane with her daughters, Jaelynne and Jordanne. Photograph: Cyril Byrne

In this compelling memoir, Lynn Ruane tells the no-holds-barred tale of her life story so far. She describes her childhood, growing up in Killinarden, Tallaght, and her gradual slippage from being a “boisterous, giddy and hard-working kid with a love of animals and people to a more hardened version of myself”. A revelation made by her parents when she was nine or 10 (you’ll have to read the book to find out what) turned her into “the bitter, angry daughter from hell”, dropping out of school and family life. She gives a graphic account of these wilderness years, when she was “missing in action”. Readers will inevitably feel immense sympathy for her parents, who spent most nights during that period going door to door looking for her, but who never gave up on her, despite the destructive agenda that was consuming her.

Particularly harrowing is her memory of the death of a close friend, Jenny Hoban, knocked down by a bus in Killinarden on a cold November night when they were all only 11. And this is just one of the many deaths Ruane experienced in her community. She states chillingly in an early chapter that “We were drug users and some of us alcoholics at the age of twelve. We stab each other, shoot each other and batter the life out of each other. It’s the fate of our births, our location, our demographics.” She returns to this theme throughout, writing later that “We are being killed by class. Homelessness, addiction, risky behaviours and mental health are not just statistics to me, they are not the stories you read in the paper, they are my friends.”

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