How To Survive World War And A Crazy Irish Mother

Who is that little girl?

She’s a “Dirty Evacuee”, just one of the many children scooped up from their London homes to escape the bombing during World War II.  And yes, she also happens to be your author!

How to Survive World War and a Crazy Irish Mother will let you relive the experiences, both humorous and touching, of this shy little six-year-old as she survives the war along with a somewhat painful adolescence.  

A fast and easy read, this humorous often bittersweet story of a disjointed childhood and equally disjointed adolescence spent with a dysfunctional Irish mother, loving relatives and an array of unwelcoming strangers, is impossible to put down! 

Cast adrift at six years of age, our child of war embarks on a succession of chaotic postings to unwelcoming foster parents in the English countryside, as well as a stint in a strict Catholic boarding school, returning home intermittently throughout the war years.  

A taxing experience for any small girl, made even more taxing by the double whammy of a decidedly erratic and dismissive Irish mother!  A mother who felt duty-bound to constantly point out that her child, saddled with spectacles from an early age, would never be fortunate enough to inherit her good looks.  (Believe me, they weren’t that good!)

Now a diminutive senior -- but don’t try telling her that -- M.C. Kenessey has written a warm, funny, charming and touchingly perceptive recounting of her experiences as a child during the war and post-war years in Britain. Well worth reading because: “It’s good for a giggle!”

A London child of World War II, M.C. Kenessey survived the horrors of the bombing, moving to Canada in her early twenties, where she then survived the horrors of working in a government typing pool. Single and virginal (as she tells it, a girl had little other option when raised, minus male siblings, in the Catholic educational system) she then met the love of her life, becoming a wife and mother.  Her introduction to writing came about as a young copy typist in London’s Fleet Street in the days when it was still the hub of Britain’s newspaper world.

She loves dancing and is convinced that in a former life she was either a belly dancer or a passionate exponent of flamenco. In any future incarnation, she hopes to return as a dictator since the world is obviously in need of someone who can tell all idiots where to go.