Rememberings

Rememberings is a memoir by Irish singer-songwriter Sinéad O'Connor. The book traces her childhood in Dublin, her rise to international fame, and a lifetime of spiritual searching shaped by abuse, music, motherhood, and defiance.

O'Connor opens by sketching her family. Her parents, Marie and John, married in 1960 in Dublin and had four children: Joe, Éimear, Sinéad, and John. In 1975, her father left her mother and gained custody of the children. Sinéad and her younger brother returned to their mother after six months because they missed her, a decision that proved devastating. At thirteen, unable to adjust to life with her father and his second wife, Viola, Sinéad was sent to a rehabilitation center for girls. At fifteen she moved to boarding school in Waterford, and at sixteen ran away to live on her own in Dublin. In 1985, her mother died in a car crash. Later that year, 18-year-old Sinéad left for London after signing with Ensign Records.

O'Connor recounts sneaking into her grandmother's parlor as a child to play an old piano, imagining it speaks to her about feelings trapped inside instruments. Her father sang "Scarlet Ribbons" at bedtime, and songs physically overwhelmed her even as a small child. Music was already both refuge and compulsion. She discovered Bob Dylan through her brother Joe and adopted Dylan as a surrogate father figure.

O'Connor describes her mother's abuse in unflinching terms. Marie beat her children with household objects, forced Sinéad to lie naked on the floor, and commanded her to repeat "I am nothing." During these episodes, Sinéad experienced visions of Jesus on the cross, who promised to replenish any blood her mother took. On another occasion, locked in her room without food, she wrote a plea to God and saw a small white cloud, which she identifies as the Holy Spirit, settle beside her and stay through the night. In a separate incident, her mother locked her in and left for the weekend; her father broke down the door to rescue her. She and her sister Éimear begged money from strangers and rode buses to the last stop, hoping their mother would be asleep when they returned.

Her mother's compulsive stealing became Sinéad's inheritance. Marie stole from church collection plates, took hospital equipment, and enlisted Sinéad in a scheme of collecting charity donation tins and pocketing the money. When Sinéad was caught and confessed to a police sergeant, her mother denied everything. A priest told Sinéad that "he who sings prays twice" and made her promise to repay the stolen money. Singing became the one act that allowed her to live with herself.

At nearly fourteen, Sinéad was sent to An Grianán (Irish for "the Sunrise"), a rehabilitation center within a convent compound. Sister Margaret, the nun overseeing the girls, bought Sinéad a guitar and a book of Bob Dylan songs. Sinéad began running away to busk and enter talent contests. As punishment, Sister Margaret sent her to sleep in a hospice wing among dying elderly women, showing her what her future could become. Sinéad never ran away again and wrote her first song, "Take My Hand," before leaving.

Her mother's death arrived abruptly: Her stepmother's car approached on the street and Sinéad knew instantly. The siblings went to their mother's house and burned a biscuit tin loaded with Valium bottles found throughout the house. At the funeral, her father cried over Marie's body, saying "I'm sorry, Marie," which enraged Sinéad.

The memoir's second part follows O'Connor's career. Ensign Records contacted her after seeing her perform with Ton Ton Macoute, a band she joined after placing an ad in Hot Press magazine. She signed for seven points (seven percent of sales) despite her lawyer urging a better offer. In London, when label head Nigel Grainge told her to grow her hair and dress more femininely, her manager Fachtna Ó Ceallaigh suggested she shave her head instead. She did, and loved the result.

Recording her debut proved difficult. When she punched a microphone after failing to reach a high note, she realized she was pregnant. John Reynolds, her collaborator and the album's drummer, was the father. Nigel sent her to a company doctor, who told her the label had spent a hundred thousand pounds and she "owes it to them not to have this baby." Fachtna revealed the money was recoupable from her own earnings. She scrapped the recordings and produced the album herself.

Her son Jake was born in July 1987, three weeks before The Lion and the Cobra was released. Her second album, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, and its number-one single "Nothing Compares 2 U" transformed her career. The video captured an unplanned moment: O'Connor cried on camera while singing about flowers her mother planted. She thought the footage was unusable, but it became iconic.

O'Connor refused Grammy and other awards, arguing that commercial success had outranked artistic merit and seeking to draw attention to child abuse. A frightening encounter with Prince followed: He invited her to his darkened home, berated her, and initiated a pillow fight with something hard hidden inside the pillow. She fled into the night, and Prince chased her by car until she rang a stranger's doorbell.

In New York, preparing for Saturday Night Live, O'Connor befriended Terry, a Rastafarian from St. Lucia who ran a juice bar and became her spiritual teacher. Days before the broadcast, Terry confessed he ran guns and drugs, using children as mules, and told her he would soon be killed. On October 3, 1992, O'Connor appeared on Saturday Night Live. Performing Bob Marley's "War" a cappella with altered lyrics addressing child abuse, she held up a photo of Pope John Paul II taken from her mother's bedroom wall, ripped it to pieces, and yelled "Fight the real enemy!" She was banned from the network for life. Terry was murdered the following Monday.

Two weeks later, at a Madison Square Garden concert honoring Bob Dylan, half the audience booed her. She abandoned her planned song and screamed "War" again. Kris Kristofferson escorted her offstage, telling her not to let the bastards get her down. O'Connor reframes these episodes not as career derailment but as re-railing, returning her to live performance and protest singing.

The book's third part surveys her albums as chapters of a healing journey. Early records emerged from pain; later ones, beginning with Theology (2007), came from healing. She describes studying bel canto, a classical vocal technique, with Frank Merriman, her father's vocal coach, who taught her to sing in her own Irish accent for Universal Mother (1994). She introduces her four children by four different fathers and reflects on her shortcomings as a young mother.

In 2015, O'Connor underwent a radical hysterectomy for chronic endometriosis. The surgeon removed her ovaries without medical necessity, triggering surgical menopause. A total breakdown followed. She spent much of 2016 and 2017 in America, cycling through psychiatric hospitals and eventually appearing on Dr. Phil in exchange for treatment at a facility she found brutalizing. She walked away and never heard from Dr. Phil again.

In October 2018, O'Connor converted to Islam, taking the name Shuhada and describing the faith as feeling like home. In September 2019, her performance of "Nothing Compares 2 U" on Ireland's Late Late Show went viral, welcoming her back to music. Writing during the 2020 lockdown, she plans a new album called No Veteran Dies Alone, inspired by volunteer work companioning dying veterans at a Chicago Veterans Administration hospital. The book closes with a letter to her father, absolving both parents of responsibility for her mental health condition, attributing it to genetics, a serious childhood head injury, and the intensity she believes accompanies musical calling. A throne in heaven awaits him, she writes, "encrusted with a jewel for every white hair your wild child ever gave you" (284).