Given the current focus on Irish writing, let’s examine one of the big trends for which we have been so responsible: Misery Lit. This is the age of misery lit (aka the Misery Memoir), to the extent that it is wandering horribly into parody. The latest example is from the writer Martha Long, who had, I’m sorry to say, a terrible childhood. Really terrible.

Born a bastard to a teenage mother in the slums of 1950s Dublin, Martha has to be a fighter from the very start. As her mother moves from man to man, and more children follow, they live hand-to-mouth in squalid, freezing tenaments, clothed in rags and forced to beg for food. The author tells the story of her early life without an ounce of self-pity.

That’s how you sell a book these days. Lay it on thick. But the title is also crucial, which increasingly has to be at least a paragraph long, heart-rending, and explain the gist of the plot. So Long’s book is subtly titled: Ma, He Sold Me For a Few Cigarettes.

I haven’t seen it in Dublin, but apparently, some of Waterstone’s UK branches have a “Painful Lives” section. So it’s a big woo-hoo to such bestselling titles as Don’t Tell Mummy (childhood abuse), Our Little Secret (childhood abuse) and Damaged (childhood abuse).

Look up Long’s book, and Amazon will recommend the following titles:

- No Way Home: The Terrifying Story of Life in a Children’s Home and a Little Girl’s Struggle to Survive
- Broken Wings: A Breathtaking Story of Joy, Hope and Love: A Story of Childhood Abuse… and Ultimate Freedom
- Not Again Daddy: One Child’s Story of Survival in an Abusive Household of Horror
- Oh God No, Daddy: The Story of One Boy’s Struggle Against The Odds. And A Family’s Silence Despite All The Shouting
- Tell Me Why, Mummy: A Little Boy’s Struggle to Survive. A Mother’s Shameful Secret. The Power to Forgive
- My Name Is Angel: This Is My Story: A Traumatic True Story of Escaping the Streets and Building a New Life
- Not Without My Sister: The True Story of Three Girls Violated and Betrayed by Those They Trusted

Actually I’ve made a couple of those up. See if you can guess which.

Each of the real ones has an almost identical cover: sepia-toned picture of fragile-looking child with title in hand-written type. Each offers readers a marketable misery with a final glimmer of hope.

The Wikipedia entry for Misery Lit says that Dave Pelzer’s A Child Called ‘It’ is generally regarded as the book that kick-started the genre, but this ignores the huge impact of Angela’s Ashes - which remains a master of the genre, not least because it’s funny and brilliantly written.

I appreciate that these writers have been through terrible circumstances, and that mocking the titles isn’t the most sensitive way of showing it, but we’ve reached a point beyond parody. A very profitable one at that.