Best piece of advice from her mother Siobhan: “Never be stingy or boring.”
When author Liz Nugent finished the manuscript of her debut novel Unravelling Oliver, her mother Siobhan was the first person she asked to read it.
Growing up in Donnybrook, she recalls her mother constantly encouraging her children to always have something to say for themselves. It was a crime in the eyes of her mother for someone to be boring or stingy.
Liz says her mother was generous to a fault. When her parents separated and her father went on to have three children in a second relationship, Siobhan used to send her children’s hand-me-downs to her husband’s new family.
After her marriage broke up, Siobhan opened an antique business which she ran for over 30 years in Dun Laoghaire. She only retired six years ago at the age of 75.
“She started that business from nothing. The shop would be open regularly until 9pm. She was working 12 hours a day into her 70s. Her work ethic is incredible.”
Liz knows that she works hard, but reckons that she could never match her 81-year-old mother’s energy levels.
“Physically she’s very strong. If we’re going out shopping and I’m carrying a bag, she’ll insist on taking a bag from me.”
Liz believes that she didn’t just inherit a work ethic from her mother but also Siobhan’s sense of ethics. “She taught me never to do anything sly or underhand.”
When she was in her teens, Liz and her mother would fight like cat and dog, but as the years passed there has been a sea-change in their relationship.
“It was a dawning realisation that she proved to be right about everything; about every man I met, about every job I took,” Liz says.