O'Hagan, Christine

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O'HAGAN, Christine

(Christine Kehl O'Hagan)

PERSONAL: Born in New York, NY; married; husband's name, Patrick; children: Patrick, Jr., Jamie.

ADDRESSES: Home—Holtsville, Long Island, NY. Agent—c/o Publicity Department, St. Martin's Press, 175 5th Ave., New York, NY 10010.

CAREER: Writer.

WRITINGS:

Benediction at the Savoia (novel), Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (New York, NY), 1992.

The Book of Kehls (memoir), St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to periodicals such as Newsday.

SIDELIGHTS: Novelist and memoirist Christine O'Hagan knows too well the effects of a dreaded neuromuscular disease that has haunted five generations of her family. In her memoir, The Book of Kehls, she tells her family's stories and relates her own struggles as her younger son, Jamie, gradually succumbed to the devastating effects of Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

When O'Hagan's great-grandmother Bridget Moore came to America from Ireland in 1865, she did not know that she was carrying the defective gene that could pass the crippling Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) to her male offspring. Females can carry the gene without exhibiting any symptoms of the disorder, but if the faulty X gene is passed on to a son, he will inevitably be stricken with the wasting disease. Two generations later, the disease affected two of O'Hagan's uncles, and her own brother Richie also died of DMD. O'Hagan married, and when her first son, Patrick Jr., had no signs of DMD, it seemed that the odds had finally been defeated. However, when her younger son, Jamie, started having trouble climbing the steps of the school bus, O'Hagan knew that DMD had once again returned, rearing its ugly head.

Throughout the book, O'Hagan "takes her heart and squeezes it until it purely aches as she relates how her son's life came to a premature close," according to a Kirkus Reviews contributor. She describes the debilitating effects of the disease on her son and relates the sincere and emotional talks she had with him as he sat with her in the kitchen while she made dinner. She relates Jamie's wish to not be kept alive artificially, and the wrenching decision to comply with her son's request. Finally, she describes her and her family's reactions to Jamie's death, the guilt and self-destructive behavior, and finally the measure of healing she acquired to allow her to resume her life and strengthen the ties with her husband and surviving son.

Booklist reviewer June Sawyers called the book a "poignant, luminous, devastatingly moving memoir" of O'Hagan's family's long-term struggle against muscular dystrophy. "O'Hagan's story is extremely depressing, her pain raw and messy," observed a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Despite the emotionally wrenching subject, Entertainment Weekly reviewer Bob Cannon remarked that O'Hagan's memoir displays "clear-eyed honesty, mordant humor," and a strong sense of the "love of God and family that provided her emotional strength." The author's "clearly written narrative is refreshingly free of self-pity and may offer solace and strength to families facing a devastating illness," concluded Deborah Anne Broocker in Library Journal.

O'Hagan's novel, Benediction at the Savoia, presents "a suffocating view of an Irish Catholic neighborhood" in Queens, New York, during the early 1960s, related a Publishers Weekly reviewer. As thirty-two-year-old Delia Delaney awaits the birth of her weeks-overdue third child, she reflects on the dysfunctional childhood that led up to her current life of forced domesticity and perpetual turmoil with her alcoholic husband. She thinks that the child she is carrying has the ability to turn her life around, but when the baby is stillborn, her world instead crashes down in grief and depression. When the novel's benediction occurs as a seemingly miraculous event at an Italian restaurant, Delia finds herself able to take the first steps toward recovery. A Publishers Weekly reviewer commented that the "narrative never gains momentum" despite an interesting set-up, but added that the book is "an ambitious novel with an interesting setting and premise" behind the story.