Oh, this is why this good book is hard to read sometimes.

"I was raised in a strict Catholic family, in a stately Victorian home..."

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"The Irish Goodbye: Micro-Memoirs by Beth Ann Fennelly" | Goodreads

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/233411621-the-irish-goodbye

That's what my childhood should told me I should be more like. Besides skinnier. And lighter, and fairer. And the sort of person who would grow up to "marry well" and carry babies in her womb, and give birth to them.