# Mother’s Ruin

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/nicola-barry/mothers-ruin/9780755316748

![Mother’s Ruin](https://quivercdn.com/covers/headline-review/nicola-barry/mothers-ruin_978-07-5531-674-8.jpg?v=2026-05-18%2015%3A58%3A35)

- Book: [Mother’s Ruin](https://www.bookquiver.com/nicola-barry/mothers-ruin) ([Mother’s Ruin.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/nicola-barry/mothers-ruin.md))
- Authors: [Nicola Barry](https://www.bookquiver.com/nicola-barry)
- Publisher: headline_review
- ISBN: 978-07-5531-674-8
- Pages: 1
- Published: 2008-03-20
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Softcover

## Description

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. 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.