The Mess We’re In by Annie Macmanus: Power of music to save a life

The Mess We’re in

Author: Annie Macmanus

ISBN-13: 978-1472297129

Publisher: Wildfire Books

Guideline Price: £18.99

Annie Macmanus found international fame and recognition as Annie Mac – superstar DJ, broadcaster, and one of Ireland’s greatest cultural exports. Her debut novel, Mother Mother, became an instant bestseller in 2021, the same year she stepped down from BBC Radio 1 after 17 years. Two years later, Macmanus is back with an evocative second novel that proves her debut was not a one-hit-wonder but rather the work that would lay the foundations for a burgeoning literary career.

The Mess We’re In is set in Kilburn, north London, at the turn of the millennium. Twenty-one-year-old Dubliner Orla Quinn has moved to the city to pursue a career producing her music when women doing so was mostly unheard of. She moves into a squalid flat with a band on the rise, Shiva, and throws herself headfirst into the hedonistic partying and sleepless nights of her new tribe.

It is to the author’s credit that she expresses both the extremities and banalities of their recreational drug use and binge drinking without either glamorising or moralising. This clear-eyed encapsulation of the culture is part of what makes Macmanus’s voice feel so fresh – her writing is unpretentious, straight-talking, and authoritative. Those familiar with her radio show, or her fantastic podcast, Changes, will recognise those traits from her broadcasting – honesty and empathy offered up with kindness and wit.

[ Bob Geldof said yes, Annie Macmanus said no, Barry McGuigan said both. So what was the question? ]

As Orla tries to process the breakdown of her family back in Ireland, the interpersonal dynamics of the band, and her evolution from Dubliner to Londoner, it is music that keeps her life on track. Unsurprisingly Macmanus is excellent at the difficult task of describing music in words – the sound of the music itself and experience of receiving it. By gifting Orla her own appreciation and critical understanding of music, Macmanus has offered her protagonist a salve with which to navigate the cacophony of a strange city. From the song titles that serve as chapter headings to the soundtrack that plays throughout the narrative, music pulses throughout. This rhythm in the prose adds a texture to the story that harmonises with its main theme – the power of music to save a life.

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‘My brother is meeting fabulous women, but they leave because he does not want more children’

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Orla is one of the few women working in a male-dominated music industry that, at the time of the novel, is 20 years away from the MeToo movement. There is no better woman to explore that landscape than Macmanus who was often the lone she-wolf pioneering the way in dance music for the women who came behind her.

It is inevitable that Orla finds herself the victim of predatory behaviour and casual sexism, but Macmanus is excellent at capturing it all with authenticity, resisting the easy temptation to infuse the era with contemporary sensibilities or understanding. Orla, on the whole, takes it all in her wobbly stride – and the impact on the reader is all the more powerful for it. The conflict between musicians as artists versus musicians as commodities is examined with a discerning eye that captures the (sometimes exciting, oftentimes brutal) reality of the music industry and the elusive record deal.

The author has spun a moving story from the threads of her own history

In order to sustain her partying, and to scrape together the rent for her mice-infested house-share, Orla works as a barmaid in a dark and dreary Irish pub, Fahy’s. Within its confines, Macmanus makes deft work of capturing the Irish emigrant intergenerational experience. To prevent the characters who frequent the pub from tipping into caricature they are written with humour and grace, offering an illuminating foil to the new Irish experience that Orla represents.

[ ‘The concept of monarchy is absurd’: Annie MacManus on London-Irish life, rejecting an MBE, and the pull of home ]

Inspired by a formative time in Macmanus’s life when she moved to London aged 21, to live with her brother’s rock band, the author has spun a moving story from the threads of her own history. Orla is written with unsentimental authenticity. We experience the intensity of her relationship with her best friend Neema, her poor decision-making and the dangerous risks she takes, but are also immersed in her unpolluted passion for music, her innocent ambition, and the courage she musters to lean into opportunities that scare her. It is her flaws, her vulnerability and her complexity that make her such a compelling character that will resonate with anyone who has ever left home in search of themselves.

Annie MacManus: Home, Irishness & Changes

Listen | 55:55

This novel is constructed of Macmanus’s DNA – her Irish emigrant experience, music industry insight, her passion for music, people and stories – and the world that is built is deeply human, provocative and enriching. Orla is searching for a voice in the noise – Macmanus articulates that hunger with confidence and compassion. And in so doing, finds her own.