Carnegie's Maid by Marie Benedict

Carnegie's Maid by Marie Benedict

Read by Alana Kerr Collins

9 hours, 1 minute

Published October 2018 by Source Landmark

Publisher's Summary: 

From the author of The Other Einstein, the mesmerizing tale of what kind of woman could have inspired an American dynasty.

Clara Kelley is not who they think she is. She's not the experienced Irish maid who was hired to work in one of Pittsburgh's grandest households. She's a poor farmer's daughter with nowhere to go and nothing in her pockets. But the other woman with the same name has vanished, and pretending to be her just might get Clara some money to send back home.

If she can keep up the ruse, that is. Serving as a lady's maid in the household of Andrew Carnegie requires skills he doesn't have, answering to an icy mistress who rules her sons and her domain with an iron fist. What Clara does have is a resolve as strong as the steel Pittsburgh is becoming famous for, coupled with an uncanny understanding of business, and Andrew begins to rely on her. But Clara can't let her guard down, not even when Andrew becomes something more than an employer. Revealing her past might ruin her future -- and her family's.

With captivating insight and heart, Carnegie's Maid tells the story of one brilliant woman who may have spurred Andrew Carnegie's transformation from ruthless industrialist into the world's first true philanthropist.

My Thoughts: 

A couple of months ago I was texting with a friend I've known and loved since I was 19 years old. She happened to mention that she was reading the last book by Marie Benedict that her local library had available and that she loved Benedict's books. Two things: 1) after more than 40 years of knowing this woman, I had no idea she was a reader (how in the world has that NEVER come up?!); and 2) if she loves this author so much, I need to read something by her, preferably an audiobook since I was just finishing one up. So I grabbed up this one, eager to find out if I would feel the same way about Benedict and to see what the book could teach me about a man whose generosity funded hundreds of libraries across the country. 

As do most historical fictions books I read, this way had me heading to the internet to find out how much truth there was to this story. In point of fact, not much other than the fact that Andrew Carnegie was, himself, an immigrant that came to this country destitute only to become one of the richest men in the world. He was known to be ruthless in business, but more generous in his personal life; still, historians have long wondered what caused him to become such a philanthropist in later life. Benedict has taken her own family's history as immigrants and woven it into Carnegie's life to try to explain that change. It's an interesting idea. 

There's a lot to be said for the socioeconomic portrait Benedict paints of this time in U.S. history and the life of the poor in Pittsburgh at that time, tying in some Irish history as well and I enjoyed those parts of the book. Overall, though, I felt like Benedict was trying to pull too much into her story and things got a little dramatic at times. The fact that our Clara Kelley needed to have her backstory to give us that history that Benedict wanted to give, but would never have been able to work in the capacity in the Carnegie household that she held had she merely applied for the job made for much more drama. Benedict also pulls in a story about the former slave head cook's missing family is another example of pulling in more drama than was necessary to tell the story. But the drama ended as soon as Clara had to leave the Carnegie household and the ending of the book fell flat for me. 

Would it make my top ten list at the end of the year? No. But it was well read and offered enough to be a solid read. It could make a good book club choice, as well. 

Twist by Colum McCann

Twist by Colum McCann

256 pages

Published March 2025 by Random House Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

“Everything gets fixed, and we all stay broken.”

Anthony Fennell, an Irish journalist and playwright, is assigned to cover the underwater cables that carry the world’s information. The sum of human existence—words, images, transactions, memes, voices, viruses—travels through the tiny fiber-optic tubes. But sometimes the tubes break, at an unfathomable depth.

Fennell’s journey brings him to the west coast of Africa, where he uncovers a story about the raw human labor behind the dazzling veneer of the technological world. He meets a fellow Irishman, John Conway, the chief of mission on a cable repair ship. The mysterious Conway is a skilled engineer and a freediver capable of reaching extraordinary depths. He is also in love with a South African actress, Zanele, who must leave to go on her own literary adventure to London.

When the ship is sent up the coast to repair a series of major underwater breaks, both men learn that the very cables they seek to fix carry the news that may cause their lives to unravel. At sea, they are forced to confront the most elemental questions of life, love, absence, belonging, and the perils of our severed connections. Can we, in our fractured world, reweave ourselves out of the thin, broken threads of our pasts? Can the ruptured things awaken us from our despair?

My Thoughts: 

In 2010, I read McCann's Let The Great World Spin and completely understood by it won the National Book Award, even if it didn't entirely work for me. But ten years later, I read his Apeirogon. That one I proclaimed "incredible;" so impressed with it was I that I couldn't put words together and had to just type in notes that I had taken as I read the book. 

This one falls somewhere in between for me. I was immediately pulled in by McCann's writing; but the story itself is a slow build as Fennell waits for his opportunity to get on that boat that will ship out to repair a broken internet cable. Even though it gave McCann a great opportunity to paint a picture of who both Fennell and Conway are and the world they find themselves in, I was as eager for Fennell to get on that boat as he was. Let me also be honest and admit that I really couldn't see why Fennell was so interested in being on that boat or what the draw was about the cables. 

Until I could. Once on the boat, though, McCann really begins to amp up the tension, but in the job they've set out to do itself and in the relationships between all of the characters. And I understood what those cables meant...not just to the world because they carry the glass tubes that carry the internet, but all of our connections to each other and our ability to communicate (or not) with each other, as much on a personal level as on a global one.

Once they are out to sea, once that tension began building, I was all in and the closer I got to the end, the harder it was for me to put down the book. Now here's a thing that often happens in a book - we reach the zenith of the story with fifty pages or so left to wrap things up and the story often flags at this point. This one did not. Even after we learn what happened to Conway (we know early on that something has happened that has tarnished his image), I needed to find out how Fennell and Zanele moved on from it. And how Fennell finally resolves his relationship with his son. 

The Hunter by Tana French

The Hunter by Tana French

Read by Roger Clark

16 hours, 24 minutes

Published March 2024 by Penguin Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

It's a blazing summer when two men arrive in a small village in the West of Ireland. One of them is coming home. Both of them are coming to get rich. One of them is coming to die.

Cal Hooper took early retirement from Chicago PD and moved to rural Ireland looking for peace. He's found it, more or less: he's built a relationship with a local woman, Lena, and he's gradually turning Trey Reddy from a half-feral teenager into a good kid going good places. But then Trey's long-absent father reappears, bringing along an English millionaire and a scheme to find gold in the townland, and suddenly everything the three of them have been building is under threat. Cal and Lena are both ready to do whatever it takes to protect Trey, but Trey doesn't want protecting. What she wants is revenge.

My Thoughts: 

Tana French is one of the author's whose books I will pick up without having the slightest idea what they are about. I read all six of the books in her Dublin Murder Squad series and there wasn't a weak link in the bunch. Five years ago she introduced us to Cal Hooper in The Searcher; I was so excited to find that she was writing a second book about Cal and couldn't wait to get my hands on this one. And now I'm crossing my fingers that this is not just a two book series. I'm looking this series as much as I did the Dublin Murder Squad series; possibly even more. 

I was recently trying to describe this book to someone, to put it into a neat genre. But it's not a book that easily falls into any one genre. Yes, there is a murder...eventually. It's a bit of a Western (and it is set in western Ireland)...there's even a bit of a gold rush.  I suppose it could be characterized as a crime novel, there's plenty of crime to be had in it. But it's far more about its characters and their relationships and an exploration of the grey areas between good and bad. 

It's a slow build of a book, but I was perfectly fine with that as we are reintroduced to the inhabitants of Ardnakelty, with all of their eccentricities, humor and long history. Relationships deepen and change. Hidden agendas are uncovered, motives revealed. Ardnakelty is much like a family - they can tease and hold grudges amongst themselves, but outsiders beware. More than two years after he's arrived, Cal is still something of an outsider, which is fine with him. As a former police officer, he struggles with the law of the land he now calls home. But in protecting Trey, and the others in the community he has grown fond of, he has to learn that sometimes things aren't just black and white. 

This one will still be on my best-of list at the end of the year, both as a novel and as a audiobook. Roger Clark does an incredible job. Clark is an Irish-American actor who easily handles the different accents and the storytelling. 

Long Island by Colm Toibin

Long Island by Colm Toibin

Read by Jessie Buckley

9 hours, 40 minutes

Published May 2024 by Scribner

Publisher's Summary: 

Eilis Lacey is Irish, married to Tony Fiorello, a plumber and one of four Italian American brothers, all of whom live in neighboring houses on a cul-de-sac in Lindenhurst, Long Island, with their wives and children and Tony's parents, a huge extended family. It is the spring of 1976 and Eilis is now forty with two teenage children. Though her ties to Ireland remain stronger than those that hold her to her new land and home, she has not returned in decades.

One day, when Tony is at work an Irishman comes to the door asking for Eilis by name. He tells her that his wife is pregnant with Tony's child and that when the baby is born, he will not raise it but instead deposit it on Eilis's doorstep. It is what Eilis does-and what she refuses to do-in response to this stunning news that makes Tóibín's novel so riveting and suspenseful.

My Thoughts: 

I was first introduced to Colm Toibin when I read his book, Brooklyn, and it was there that readers first met Eilis Lacey and Tony Fiorello. I looked back at my review to that book to see if my feelings now about that book mirrored what I'd felt about it when I first finished reading it. They did. But I found something interesting in that review. I remarked that: Time moves at quite a pace in Brooklyn; Toibin bypasses long periods of time between episode and vignettes. Here, it felt very much the opposite. This is not a book that spans years, but rather weeks. But things also remain very much the same: Nothing showy or lush about Brooklyn. All of the emotion is just under the surface and yet it is palpable and the characters are believable and realistic. 

What would you do if you found yourself in Eilis' position? She has told Tony she will, under no circumstances, raise his child by another woman and she does not want it raised in the family. Unable to get confirmation from Tony that she won't have to see the child, she leaves for Ireland, ostensibly for her mother's upcoming 80th birthday. Although she hasn't been home in decades, there's a part of Eilis that longs for the place where she most comfortable; it certainly isn't on Long Island, surrounded by her Tony's extended Italian family where she still feels like something of an outsider. 

All of that contributes to what happens in Ireland when Eilis is encounters Jim, the man she fell in love with when she was last in Ireland and whom she left behind to return to Tony (who she was already secretly married to). Once again Eilis is torn between the settled life she has and the dream of a deep love she finds in Ireland. What might happen between Eilis and Jim is complicated by the fact that Jim is already engaged to one of Eilis' old friends and the arrival of Eilis' children, who have never met their Irish grandmother. 

There are a lot of twists and turns to this one and it is, to a great extent less about Eilis than was Brooklyn. Still, I enjoyed getting to know Jim and Nancy better and to get an even better look at Eilis' relationship with her mother. We spend a lot of time wondering if Eilis will, once again, return to Tony or will, this time, stay in Ireland. Still trying to process how I feel about the end of the book and if you look at other reviews, you'll find I'm not alone. 

I very much liked that Nora Webster (of Toibin's title by the same name) appears in this book, as Eilis' mother did in that book. Jessie Buckley's reading of Long Island is spectacular. I highly recommend listening to this one. Like Brooklyn, this one would make a good book club selection, as there is a lot to process here. It's appearing on "Best of 2024" lists, although, to be honest, I'm not sure it will make mine. I'm sure that has more to do with me than others giving Toibin the accolades he deserves for his body of work. 

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue

304 pages

Published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary: 

Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them. 

When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her devise a reading at their local bookstore, with the goal that she might seduce him afterwards. But Fred has other desires. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s glamorous, well-connected, bourgeois wife. Aching with unrequited love, shot through with delicious, sparkling humor, The Rachel Incident is a triumph.

My Thoughts: 

We first encounter Rachel years later, when she is married, pregnant and a journalist (finally using that college degree). She's come across an article mentioning that Fred has fallen into a coma and it takes Rachel straight back to the past, to the time when she first met James while working in a bookstore together. At six-foot tall, bookish, and adrift, Rachel was easy prey for James, who all but bullied his way into her life. Soon the two were living together, becoming the best of friends. "Running riot" is a good description of the lives they were living; "bohemian existence" is putting it nicely. 

Everything is going swimmingly, despite them struggling to make ends meet. When James comes to the reality that he's gay, they both embrace it. But when James and Fred hook up, it changes things. Yes, Fred brings them bottles of wine, flowers, and fancy foods. But it's hard for Rachel to see Fred, her literature professor, as her best friend's lover. Until, in desperation, she realizes she can use the situation to her own advantage. Soon Fred has found her a position as his wife's intern, a position which pays poorly but gives Rachel an emotional life and a new friend. 

Meanwhile Rachel has found herself a boyfriend, a young man who is more than a little listless and unreliable. When he has to go home to care for his mother, Rachel discovers that she's pregnant. Through a misunderstanding and other circumstances, Rachel finds her relationship with Fred's wife at an end, her relationship with James tested, and herself a pariah in the community. 

O'Donoghue manages to create a book that starts out very much playing for laughs but the humor gets darker as life gets harder and harder for Rachel. Ireland in an economic collapse means Rachel's only hope for a job is in a call center, her parents' dental practice is going under, and her boyfriend can't be relied on to help. O'Donoghue tackles a lot in this one - sexuality, sexual identity, infidelity, economic crisis, unwanted pregnancy and the difficulty in finding medical help, parent/child relationships, friendships, morality. Rachel isn't always a sympathetic character, but I couldn't help but care for her, especially as the adults around her kept letting her down. I was glad that O'Donoghue circled back to the beginning of the book and gave readers (and Rachel) some closure and hope. 

April in Spain by John Banville

April In Spain by John Banville

320 pages

Published October 2021 by Hanover Square Press

Publisher's Summary: 

Don't disturb the dead…

On the idyllic coast of San Sebastian, Spain, Dublin pathologist Quirke is struggling to relax, despite the beaches, cafés and the company of his disarmingly lovely wife. When he glimpses a familiar face in the twilight at Las Acadas bar, it's hard at first to tell whether his imagination is just running away with him.

Because this young woman can't be April Latimer. She was murdered by her brother, years ago—the conclusion to an unspeakable scandal that shook one of Ireland's foremost political dynasties.

Unable to ignore his instincts, Quirke makes a call back home to Ireland and soon Detective St. John Strafford is dispatched to Spain. But he's not the only one en route. A relentless hit man is on the hunt for his latest prey, and the next victim might be Quirke himself.

My Thoughts:

I've long been meaning to ready something by John Banville (his name is always popping up on lists of great authors). So I didn't even read what this book is about before I reserved it at the library and, no surprise, I didn't read the summary before I jumped in. Even though I knew nothing about the book and should have been ready for anything, I was still surprised to read this opening: 

"Terry Tice liked killing people. It was as simple as that. Maybe "liked" wasn't the right word. Nowadays he was paid to do it, and well paid. But money was never the motive, not really."

Woah now. What kind of book have I picked up? As it turns out, quite a good one, filled with truly interesting and unusual characters, a lot of darkness, and a little humor starting with the play on words in the title. There are a number of storylines going on at the same time here, which flit in and out of each other, not coming fully together until nearly the end of the book which isn't, as it so often, distracting, but instead pulls readers through the book. As good as the story is, it's Banville's writing that really made this book work for me, as in this passage where the always cranky Quirke is complaining about vacationing: 

"The conspiracy begins the moment you arrive, as he pointed out to Evelyn, who was knitting, and wasn't listening. There's the grinning doorman who yanks open the door of your taxi and gabbles a greeting in pidgin English. There's the beaming girl in black behind the reception desk who exclaims, in her bouncy way, that it is a pleasure to welcome you back, even though you've never stayed here before. There is the porter, lean and stopped, with a melancholy eye and a mustache that might have been drawn on with an eyebrow pencil, who festoons himself with your suitcases and staggers away with them, to arrive at the door of your room a mysterious twenty minutes later - was he off in some cubbyhole in the meantime, going through your things? - and, having shown you how the light switches work anyhow to open and close the curtains, loiters expectantly on the threshold, with his fake, ingratiating smile, waiting for his tip."

Doesn't that draw a vivid picture even as it tells you so much about who Quirke is? Another vivid picture, one that might feel excessive in a such a slim novel but doesn't. 

"His keenest, secret enthusiasm was the lift. It ran, or joggled, rather, up and down through the very heart of the building. It was ancient and creaky, with a folding iron gate that shuddered shut with a satisfying clatter. Inside, it was lined with red plush, and attached to the back wall, below a framed mirror, was a little wooden seat hardly deeper than a bookshelf, covered with a raggedy piece of carpet held in place by round-headed nails worn to a shine over the years by the well-upholstered posteriors of countless well-heeled guests."

Throughout the book Banville reveals things that appear to indicate that this is not the first book that features Quirke, that there may be things that first time readers don't know. But the book is so well done that it comes off feeling more like Banville has just dropped readers into a life and you're going to have to accept that there will be some things that you don't know about the characters and their pasts. It was only after I finished the book that I found out that Banville has written a number of books featuring Quirke. So now I need to find more books by Banville and books about Quirke. 

Nora Webster by Colm Toibin

Nora Webster by Colm Toibin

384 pages

Published 2014 by Scribner

Publisher's Summary: 

Set in Wexford, Ireland, Colm Tóibín’s magnificent seventh novel introduces the formidable, memorable, and deeply moving Nora Webster. Widowed at forty, with four children and not enough money, Nora has lost the love of her life, Maurice, the man who rescued her from the stifling world to which she was born. And now she fears she may be sucked back into it. Wounded, selfish, strong-willed, clinging to secrecy in a tiny community where everyone knows your business, Nora is drowning in her own sorrow and blind to the suffering of her young sons, who have lost their father. Yet she has moments of stunning insight and empathy, and when she begins to sing again, after decades, she finds solace, engagement, a haven—herself.

My Thoughts: 

I picked this book to read in March because of it being Irish and Toibin having written one of my club's favorites, Brooklyn. Like Brooklyn, Toibin is again writing the story of a female and doing an admirable job of it. Unlike Brooklyn (a novel Toibin wrote and published after he'd started this one and set it aside), this one was not a hit with the club, in no small part because it was hard to get emotionally attached to Nora, a character with whom a group of women of a certain age should have been able to relate. 

It's a quiet, slow novel and Nora is not a particularly likable character. We first meet her not long after her beloved husband has died, leaving Nora with four children to raise and no idea how she will make ends meet. Other writers might have chosen to make Nora a sympathy character, one who holds her children close, relies on the kindness of others, and allows us to see her pain. Nora is not that character. 

When we first meet her, Nora is tired of people stopping by to express their condolences for her loss, some people who have never before come to the house. She understands they mean well, but Nora is a person who wants to keep her life and her loss private in a small town where everyone has known everyone else all of their lives. She struggles accepting their sympathy and their offers of kindness. 

She struggles even more dealing with her children's emotional needs but we soon learn that parenting is not necessarily something that Nora has ever excelled at. 

"It was strange, she thought, that she had never before put a single thought into whether or not they [her children] were happy or not, or tried to guess what they were thinking."

Nora is vastly more likely to opt to do nothing, to say nothing, then to try to figure out what her children are thinking or feeling. As a mother, I found that hard to imagine and it made it harder to feel for a person who seemed so cold. 

At the time my book club met to discuss the book, I was freshly finished reading it. I was hard pressed to explain what the book was even about. But in the week since I've finished it, it has grown on me. Nora is a woman who never seemed to feel love until she met Maurice and now she's not sure how to go on without him. But she was also overshadowed by Maurice - everyone knew and loved him. Without him she's not sure what opinions she should have about things. And she struggles with how to move on. 

"So this was what being alone was like, she thought. It was not the solitude she had been going through, nor the moments when she felt his death like a shock to her system, as though she had been in a car accident, it was this wandering in a sea of people with the anchor lifted, and all of it oddly pointless and confusing."

Being left in such a hard position begins to make Nora tougher and helps her find her voice. One evening, watching television with Maurice's brother, Nora finds herself able to contradict him about a political matter. 

"Jim tapped the arm of the chair with the index finger of his right hand and whistled under his breath. He was not sued to women disagreeing with him, and she smiled at the thought that he might, if he was to continue visiting her house, have to learn to tolerate it." 

Gradually Nora begins to find herself, a person, I think, she has never really known, even as she learns to appreciate what others are willing to do for her. Nora begins (not without still worrying what others will think) to color her hair, buy new clothes, find her own pastimes, and redecorate her home. And slowly, she lets go of Maurice. 

After that week of thinking about the book, I can say that I appreciated it a lot more. Still, I'm not sure that I would say that I really liked it. 

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

Published June 2020 by HarperCollins Publishers

Source: checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary:
The bride – The plus one – The best man – The wedding planner – The bridesmaid – The body

On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.

But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.

And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?

My Thoughts:

While I was reading this book, I was balancing it with two others - all needed to be read within about a two week period and all were good. But this was the book that I kept wishing I was reading when I was reading the others. 

Foley alternates the chapters between five characters - the bride, the plus one, the best man, the wedding planner, and the bridesmaid - and between the days leading up to the wedding and the wedding itself. It's an interesting way to reveal pieces of each character and to slowly reveal what happens at the wedding. We know early on that something terrible has happened but we don't know until nearly the end that there actually is a dead body nor who it is. As the chapters reveal more and more about the characters, we find ourselves thinking that any one of the characters might end up being a victim and that there are any number of reasons that each of them might be killed. Almost all of the characters in the book, major and minor, are unlikable, from the bride and groom to her parents and every last one of his groomsmen. Even the wedding guests themselves, most of whom remain nameless, are nothing more than a bunch of thoughtless drunks. 

Each of the characters, of course, has his or her own secrets that are revealed throughout the book but the biggest surprises for me were in how some of the characters tied in with each other, making the victim more obvious but the killer even less so. At least that's the way it worked for me. The setting provides the perfect set up - isolated, posing the possibility of secrets the island might reveal and dangers from the setting itself. I liked the way Foley handled the reveal of the murderer and the fallout from the murder but the closing of the book fell flat for me. Still, it was just the kind of book that I'm enjoying right now - the kind of book that pulls me through it and takes me completely away from my own reality. 

The Pull of The Stars by Emma Donoghue

The Pull of The Stars by Emma Donoghue

Published July 2020 by Little, Brown, and Company

Source: courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:

In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new Flu are quarantined together. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders — Doctor Kathleen Lynn, a rumoured Rebel on the run from the police , and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney. 

In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other's lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work. 

In The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue once again finds the light in the darkness in this new classic of hope and survival against all odds.

My Thoughts: 

I've enjoyed Donoghue's books in the past so didn't even look to see what this book was about before I started it and was surprised to find myself reading about a pandemic, even as we are living through one. In the Author's Notes at the end, Donoghue says that she had turned in the final edits of her book in March 2020, just as it became clear that this novel coronavirus was going to be a worldwide pandemic. It's not the only way that this book, set 100 years ago, is timely; it explores the ways in which politics affects our lives and the way poverty is exacerbated by the pandemic (or is it the other way around?). 

I was also surprised that this was a book set almost entirely in one room, harkening back to Donoghue's earlier work Room. Donoghue is certainly adept at creating a wide world in a small space and in creating stories and characters that showcase the strength of women, from the woman who has come in pregnant with her twelfth child to the female doctor who is working to try to save lives even as the authorities are trying to arrest her. 

At times, it felt a little bit like one of those adventure movies where if anything can go wrong, it will, what with every kind of tragedy playing out in that ward. And I was about two-thirds of the way through this book and still trying to figure out where Donoghue was going with this story when it finally occurred to me that she had already arrived there and all of those medical emergencies were there for a reason. At one point, a male orderly suggests that women shouldn't get the vote because they didn't fight in the war, didn't pay the "blood price." Donoghue makes it clear that women have always paid the blood price. In the end, I came away from this book knowing that I'd be thinking about these characters and what had happened in that ward for a long time. It would be hard not to, given that we're living through it right now. 

The Searcher by Tana French

The Searcher by Tana French

Read by Roger Clark

Published October 2020 by Penguin Publishing Group

Source: checked out audiobook from my local library

Publisher's Summary:

Cal Hooper thought a fixer-upper in a bucolic Irish village would be the perfect escape. After twenty-five years in the Chicago police force and a bruising divorce, he just wants to build a new life in a pretty spot with a good pub where nothing much happens. But when a local kid whose brother has gone missing arm-twists him into investigating, Cal uncovers layers of darkness beneath his picturesque retreat, and starts to realize that even small towns shelter dangerous secrets.

My Thoughts:

I'm pretty sure I've made it clear that I'm a big fan of Tana French; her Dublin Murder Series never disappoints. The Searcher is not part of that series and I was eager to see if I would like a stand alone book by French as much. 

Janet Maslin, of the New York Times, says that French doesn't write genres or thrillers..."She writes full-bodied novels in which crimes happen to have been committed." The Searcher is very different than French's other books but Maslin's assertion seems to be even more true in this book than in her others. Cal Hooper may have been looking more at location, location, location when he bought his house but what French gives us is atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere. The setting is vivid.

“The air is rich as fruitcake, like you should do more with it than just breathe it; bite off a big mouthful, maybe, or rub handfuls of it over your face.”

French could have made this nothing more than the story of a stranger in a new land finding a way to fit in to his new surrounding and it would have worked for me. Her characters are so interesting - you will feel that you know them but also that there is something that there are secrets they are keeping. That's where the mystery of this book comes in. What has become of Brendan Reddy, the son of a ne'er-do-well and a part of a family the people of Arknakelty would like to ignore? No one much seems to be concerned, except his sibling, Trey who finds out that Cal used to be a police officer and won't leave Cal alone until he agrees to help find Brendan. Finding Brendan is a slow-burn part of the plot, often feeling like it's almost part of the background. Until it isn't and suddenly readers are put on edge wondering where the danger is coming from. Along the way, though, the real strength of this book is the relationships Cal forms with several of the villagers - with his nosy neighbor, Mart; with the woman the town is trying to set him up with, Lana; but most importantly, with Trey. 

French has said this book is an homage to the American Western and you can certainly see that in much of the story line. Cal is the John Wayne of this novel. His back story is a bit clunky and French might well have cut part of it out without losing a thing; all of it results in a lot of introspection on Cal's part, which can also be a bit of a drag on the book. 

Some reviewers are calling this book one of French's strongest novels, others one of her weakest. As for me, I was utterly immersed in it. Roger Clark does a wonderful job of reading the book; periodically his Irish accent break through into his "American" narrator's voice, but that's a small complaint. I liked Cal and I enjoyed watching him try to work out his own issues, figure out what's what in his new home, and deal with an angry teenager. Once again, French did not disappoint. 

Say Nothing by Patrick

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder And Memory In Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
Read by Matthew Blaney
Published February 2019 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary:
In December 1972, Jean McConville, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders, her children clinging to her legs. They never saw her again. Her abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress—with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes.

Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders. From radical and impetuous I.R.A. terrorists such as Dolours Price, who, when she was barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and targeting informers for execution, to the ferocious I.R.A. mastermind known as The Dark, to the spy games and dirty schemes of the British Army, to Gerry Adams, who negotiated the peace but betrayed his hardcore comrades by denying his I.R.A. past—Say Nothing conjures a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish.


My  Thoughts:
In 2013, Patrick Keefe happened upon the obituary of Dolours Price, formerly a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. He knew a great story when he saw one. After reading that obituary, Keefe began a four year journey that would take him to Ireland seven times and have him interviewing more than 100 people. Many people refused to be interviewed and others backed out - The Troubles may have ended, but the fear had not left Northern Ireland. Many of the primary "characters" in the book were either dead or refused to be interviewed. Keefe was left to piece together the truth, as best he could, from other interviews and extensive research.

Top to bottom, left to right: Marian and Dolours Price at
10 Downing Street, Dolours Price, Dolours Price from the
book cover, Dolours and Marian Price at the march that
radicalized them, Marian's and Dolour's mug shots.

It's telling that I have looked at the front of the this book perhaps a hundred or more times at this point and it never once occurred to me that the person on the front of the book, a person I understood to be a member of the IRA, was a woman. That is not a man. That is Dolours Price. I am not alone in not thinking of a woman as an violent radical; Dolours and her sister, Marian, used their femininity to get into places they could not have gotten into if they were men and back out of plenty of trouble. The Price sisters were, in fact, more than willing to resort to violence for their cause as part of the branch of the IRA known as The Unknowns. They were inexplicably tied to many others who believed in the fight to rid Northern Ireland of the British including Brendan Hughs and Gerry Adams, who led the IRA (although Adams denies any involvement); Pat McClure, who led The Unknowns; and Bobby Sands, the IRA soldier who was the first IRA member to be allowed by the British to die on a hunger strike.

Jean McConville with three of her children, Gerry Adams
and Brendan Hughs at Long Kesh internment camp, newspaper
headline about the death of Bobby Sands, the aftermath of the Old
Bailey bombing for which Dolours and Marian were arrested.

It's clear that Keefe has little sympathy for the British but finds plenty of blame for what happened in the thirty-year period known as The Troubles. That bit of bias takes nothing away from this book. It is deserving of every accolade it earned last year. Keefe dives deep into the history of the IRA and The Troubles and the lasting impact of the divisions. Three decades after the Easter Sunday peace accord was reached, The Disappeared still have not all been found, the IRA, while, in theory, disarmed, still strikes fear into people, and Britain is still in Ireland, a fact that many still fight against.

Matthew Blaney is marvelous reading the book but the audiobook doesn't include the notes. They weren't necessary for me to be blown away by the book: I didn't even know they existed until the end of the book. But once I was aware for them, I really wished I had a copy of the physical book to refer to while I listened. If you're going to read this book, and get your hands on both the audio and print book, I certainly suggest you do that.

If you're looking for a book filled with fascinating people, a little known history (at least in the U.S.), and a remarkably well-told tale, I'd highly recommend Say Nothing.

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue
Read by Kate Lock
Published September 2016 by Little, Brown and Company
Source: audiobook checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary:
An English nurse brought to a small Irish village to observe what appears to be a miracle - a girl said to have survived without food for months - soon finds herself fighting to save the child's life.

Tourists flock to the cabin of eleven-year-old Anna O'Donnell, who believes herself to be living off manna from heaven, and a journalist is sent to cover the sensation. Lib Wright, a veteran of Florence Nightingale's Crimean campaign, is hired to keep watch over the girl.

My Thoughts:
I've only just finished this book this morning, racing to the end before my loan expired. I'm certain the book suffered from the fact that I had to listen to it, much of the time I had it, at 1.5 speed. While I often felt as if the book were going nowhere and I just wanted Donoghue to get on with it, I attribute much of that to the fact that I was feeling a rush to get through the book. Why do all of my library loans have to come in sooner than I am planning for them and why does there always seem to be at least one person waiting to get ahold of the book so that I can't renew it?!

On the other hand, perhaps Donoghue meant to do that, meant to have readers understand the long days stuck in one room, the slow dying of little Anna, the hours for Lib to do nothing but go inside her own head. And, to be fair, it did take some time for Lib to reach her various conclusions about what was happening and who was at fault. Here is where Donoghue was a bit of a master mystery writer - Lib invariably came to her conclusions as she pondered what someone had told her earlier, things the reader was privy to and might have caught earlier than Lib. I never did, but I always recalled what had been said.

That having been said, the last two hours of the book races along, with secrets being revealed left and right. Then I so wished I could slow the book down and really enjoy the revel and be able to get caught up in the tension. The lesson here is this - if you decide to read or listen to this book, take your time and don't give up on it.

Donoghue throws organized religion (particularly the Catholic faith with its miracles and sainthood) and the medical profession of the 19th century, under the bus. And then backs the bus back up over them. While she does let the village priest and a nun who is also keeping watch with Lib up off the ground to brush themselves off, the dogma of religion and the village doctor with his antiquated ways don't fare well.

Through all of this, Donoghue also manages to educate readers about Ireland's potato famine and about Florence Nightingale. Nightingale became known as "The Lady With The Lamp" because of the rounds she made of soldiers at night. This has always conjured up, in my mind, a warm, compassionate woman who offered the soldiers kindness as well as care. Donoghue uses Lib to show us that, while Nightingale was among the first to recognize the importance of sanitary conditions and proper living conditions and was instrumental in turning nursing into a revered profession, her emphasis was on keeping a professional distance and not becoming so entangled with patients that their care suffered. I certainly had expected, when I picked this book up, to learn so much or to have it leading me to do more research. You know how I love that in a book!

The ending of the book was a little too neat and tidy for me while, at the same time, leaving me frustrated that nothing seemed to have been learned by those in Anna's village who encouraged her fasting.

The Trespasser by Tana French

The Trespasser by Tana French
Read by Hilda Fay
Published October 2016 by Penguin Publishing
Source: audiobook checked out from my library

Publisher's Summary:
Being on the Murder Squad is nothing like Detective Antoinette Conway dreamed it would be. Her partner, Stephen Moran, is the only person who seems glad she’s there. The rest of her working life is a stream of thankless cases, vicious pranks, and harassment. Antoinette is savagely tough, but she’s getting close to the breaking point.

Their new case looks like yet another by-the-numbers lovers’ quarrel gone bad. Aislinn Murray is blond, pretty, groomed-to-a-shine, and dead in her catalog-perfect living room, next to a table set for a romantic dinner. There’s nothing unusual about her—except that Antoinette’s seen her somewhere before.

And that her death won’t stay in its neat by-numbers box. Other detectives are trying to push Antoinette and Steve into arresting Aislinn’s boyfriend, fast. There’s a shadowy figure at the end of Antoinetteʼs road. Aislinnʼs friend is hinting that she knew Aislinn was in danger. And everything they find out about Aislinn takes her further from the glossy, passive doll she seemed to be.

Antoinette knows the harassment has turned her paranoid, but she can’t tell just how far gone she is. Is this case another step in the campaign to force her off the squad, or are there darker currents flowing beneath its polished surface?

My Thoughts:
First of all, if you get a chance to listen to this one, do it. If you are not absolutely sucked into the book by the Irish accent alone, I'm not sure we can be friends any more. And not only do we get the accent, but Fay does a terrific job of reading the book and a great job with finding voices for the multiple characters.

As for the book itself, Tana French has never disappointed me yet. The Trespasser is no exception. This is the sixth book in French's Dublin Murder Squad "series." Here, French has, unusually, brought back two detectives from the last book; this time, however, Antoinette takes center stage and Moran plays a supporting role.

Antoinette might be my favorite French character. A loner with a temper by nature, Conway is even more isolated in the murder squad, the only woman, the only person of color.  She's forced to work the night shift, she's never given the big cases.The good old boys do not make it easy on her and make it clear they want her out. They spit in her coffee if she leaves it on her desk when she leaves the room, they urinate in her locker, they abscond with reports and evidence. This is not  a woman who can't get along with people, though. She did just fine when she was working in the missing persons division and she does have mates. And this is a woman who calls her mum after her shift every day. French does a great job of making this porcupine of a character someone readers can cheer for.

Like all of French's Dublin Murder Squad books, you'd better be paying attention because even though there's not a lot of evidence or suspects in this one, French keeps her readers guessing. Knowing that French's books generally don't end tidily, I wasn't surprised that things got very twisted toward the end. On the other hand, I still didn't have any idea where she was going. I rarely do with her books which is part of what makes me keep coming back.

Ashes of Fiery Weather by Kathleen Donohoe

Ashes of Fiery Weather by Kathleen Donohoe
Published August 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:
"There isn’t anything in the world that hurts like a burn.” No one knows the pain of a fire more than the women of the Keegan/O’Reilly clan. Kathleen Donohoe’s stunning debut novel brings to life seven unsentimental, wry, and evocative portraits of women from a family of firefighters.

When we meet Norah — the first member of her family to move from Ireland to New York — she is a mother of three, contemplating her husband’s casket as his men give him a full fireman’s funeral, and faced with a terrible choice. Norah's mother-in-law, Delia, is stoic and self-preserving. Her early losses have made her keep her children close and her secrets closer. Eileen, Delia’s daughter, adopted from Ireland and tough-as-nails, yet desperate for a sense of belonging, is one of the first women firefighters in New York. It is through her eyes that we experience 9/11, blindsided by the events of that terrible day along with her.

My Thoughts:
They say (whoever "they" is) to write about what you know. Raised in a family of Irish-American New York firefighters, Kathleen Donohoe took that advice to heart. Her experience in that world shows. She understands the fear, the pride, the strain on families, the bonds in the community.

In Ashes of Fiery Weather, we get the stories of the Devlin/Keegan/O'Reilly family through six generations as told through the points of view of seven women. This is one of those books that I requested based on the description (okay, partly on the cover) and then forgot what it was about when I started reading it. When I did, wow. Family drama. Irish immigrant firefighters. Dead young father. Yep, I was all in with Norah's story.

Not all of the stories grabbed me as deeply and sometimes, with 20 or so main characters, things got confusing (even with a family tree at the front of the book). Some of that has to do with me having to put the book down for a few weeks for other commitments and losing track of who was who and emotional attachments.

When I picked it up and started reading Eileen's story, I was reading the story of the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the twin towers on 9/11, as seen from the point of view of a firefighter. It is an incredible piece of storytelling, emotional without being maudlin. This is as much the story of the firefighters who survived that day and had to live with the aftermath of losing 343 of their own as it is about those who lost their lives. The desperation, the terrible strain of what those who were digging found, the ash and debris and lack of communication were palpable. In this chapter, it felt like Donohoe really dug down to what it means to be a firefighter. This chapter alone made the book worth reading.

"The press kept pushing the idea that the firefighters ran into the buildings heedless of the danger. That phrase. They guys had been repeating it around the firehouse: I'm going down the basement heedless of the danger. I'm cooking these meatballs heedless of the danger. I'm cleaning these tools heedless of the danger. 

In speaking of the courage it took to run into burning buildings, the press made it sound like firefighters didn't give a f^*# about "the danger," whether it came from a smoldering hardware store that looked like an easy job or two skyscrapers hit by airplanes.  

But the guys on 9/11 had not died gladly."

"Until recently, though, Eileen had not considered what Sean would have done if he was given the choice of dying at thirty-five  or driving out of Brooklyn into a much longer life. Presented with it at twenty years old, he would have gone away. What young guy wouldn't? But suppose it was the night before the fire, when Sean had been a husband for eleven years and a father for ten? 

Eileen look now at her niece and nephew, both coming up on thirty, their lives on the courses they'd chosen, or found themselves on. She thought of Brendan and Rose, still starting out, and of Norah, who had planned to stay in New York for a year and ended up spending a lifetime, most of it grieving. 

Sean would not have chosen a life without her, a life in which his kids never existed. And he would not have run from the fire that killed him, even if he had been told it would. 

The whole job was the pull between knowing you could get killed and thinking you'll always find the way out. Knowing what will happen if you don't. Going in anyway."

Donohoe touches on a lot of themes in Ashes of Fiery Weather: family relationships, religion, abuse, poverty, infertility, homosexuality, traditions, immigration. But the overarching theme of this book is missing persons - young sons lost to illness, a husband and father lost to fire, a child given up for adoption, lost parents, a daughter and mother lost to unbelievable tragedy - and the ways people deal with that loss. Some pull in on themselves, others grow a hard shell. Some find new strength, others can never get over the void in their life. Donohoe shows readers all of this and the fallout it can have.

Faithful Place by Tana French

Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad Series #3) by Tana French
Published by Viking Penguin July 2010
Source: this one is all mine

Publisher's Summary:
Back in 1985, Frank Mackey was nineteen, growing up poor in Dublin's inner city, and living crammed into a small flat with his family on Faithful Place. But he had his sights set on a lot more. He and Rosie Daly were all ready to run away to London together, get married, get good jobs, break away from factory work and poverty and their old lives.

But on the winter night when they were supposed to leave, Rosie didn't show. Frank took it for granted that she'd dumped him-probably because of his alcoholic father, nutcase mother, and generally dysfunctional family. He never went home again.

Neither did Rosie. Everyone thought she had gone to England on her own and was over there living a shiny new life. Then, twenty-two years later, Rosie's suitcase shows up behind a fireplace in a derelict house on Faithful Place, and Frank is going home whether he likes it or not.

Getting sucked in is a lot easier than getting out again. Frank finds himself straight back in the dark tangle of relationships he left behind. The cops working the case want him out of the way, in case loyalty to his family and community makes him a liability. Faithful Place wants him out because he's a detective now, and the Place has never liked cops. Frank just wants to find out what happened to Rosie Daly-and he's willing to do whatever it takes, to himself or anyone else, to get the job done.

My Thoughts:
I'm done. I've now read all five of the Dublin Murder Squad books. I'm so sad.

I read the series out of order, sort of. I was introduced to French's books with book four in the series, Broken Harbor and then read The Secret Place when it came out. In August, I went back to the beginning. Which leaves me ending with Faithful Place.

Because French brings one or two characters from one book into the next, it's probably best to start with book one and work your way through the books, although it's certainly not necessary. On the other hand, had I done that, I would not have ended my French reading spree with what I think is the best of the books.

Frank Mackey first appeared in the second book, The Likeness. I did not like him at all. He was a cop who was all about getting the results that he wanted and his methods were not entirely on the up and up. He was not a nice guy.

In Faithful Place, French takes us back and let's us see what made Frank Mackey the person he became. A tough neighborhood, abusive parents, and terrible heartbreak turned a young boy into a tough guy who's not necessarily interested in the rules. Frank's also really, really not interested in getting involved again with his screwed up family. So unwilling to do it that his ex-wife and seven-year-old daughter have never even met any of them except one sister. When she calls him in hysterics, though, and drops the name of Rosie Daly, Frank can't help but be pulled back in and we spend a lot of time getting to know them and his complicated relationship with them.

As interesting as solving the case is, the relationship between the characters and Frank's relationship with Faithful Place were the most interesting things about Faithful Place. Frank still may not be the nicest guy or most ethical cop, but he's a complete person, a devoted father with a sad past and a deep love for the girl he thought left him. I've kind of got a soft spot for ol' Frankie now.

Now how much longer to I have to wait for the next book?!

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
368 pages
Published 1996
Source: I own it

Malachy McCourt had barely arrived in America before he met Angela Sheehan.  Soon she was pregnant and the two were "convinced" that they should marry by Angela's cousins.  Cousins who ever after told her what a terrible man her husband was.  They were right; Malachy McCourt was an alcoholic who was never able to keep a job for more than three weeks and frequently drank his entire pay for a week before he went home.  This was the life that Frank was born into.  Within a couple of years he was joined by brothers Malachy, Oliver, and Eugene and sister Margaret, the apple of her father's eye.  For Margaret, their father stopped drinking and had she lived who knows how the McCourt family's life might have changed.  But she didn't; Malachy started drinking more than ever and Angela sank into a deep depression.  Eventually her cousins convinced the family to return to Ireland, where things went from very bad to much, much worse.

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all.  It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while.  Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

A miserable childhood it was.  There were more children born and more children died.  McCourt's father continued his drinking ways, forcing the family to rely for years almost exclusively on the assistance of various agencies (in his defense, it played hugely against him that he was from the North living in Limerick). There was rarely much more to eat than bread and often not enough coal to boil water for tea.  Frank suffered from typhoid fever and the worst case of conjunctivitis that I've ever heard of.  During his three month confinement with the typhoid, he spent most of his time alone in a ward of the hospital where there were no other patients and his mother was not even allowed to visit.  His life at home was so bad, that when he was finally able to return home he found himself longing for the quiet, the warmth and the cleanliness of the hospital.

"I think my father is like the Holy Trinity with three people in him, the one in the morning with the paper, the one at night with the stories and the prayers, and then the one who does the bad thing and comes home with the smell of whiskey and wants us to die for Ireland."

With the second World War going on, many of the Irish father's went to London and began sending home money to the other families on the lane,  When Malachy goes to London, the McCourts finally think their luck has changed.  But not one dime ever arrives from England.  Not only that, but with Malachy gone, the family was no longer eligible for the assistance they had relied on for years.  Now the family become more and more reliant on a family that didn't want to help and a church that kept turning its back on them.

"This is my mother, begging.  This is worse than the dole, the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the Dispensary.  It's the worst kind of shame, almost as bad as begging on the streets where the tinkers hold up their scabby children, Give us a penny for the poor child, mister, the poor child is hungry, missus."

I cannot imagine how any of the McCourt children survived this life.  Yet survive Frank and three of his brothers did.  Frank decided at fourteen to quit school, despite a passion for learning, to become a telegram boy, a job that not only helped his family survive but also allowed him to begin saving money for his eventual escape back to  America. 

Oh Frank McCourt, how I love this book!  I read it the year it won the Pulitzer and it earned a hard to earn spot on my permanent bookshelf.  Which means that, theoretically, I will someday re-read a book.  But I have a hard time ever making myself do that.  How could a book that's sitting on that shelf ever live up to my memory of it?  This one did.

This time I was struck by the fact that McCourt frequently repeated things.  Where I might have thought on the first read that this was done to effectively emphasize his points, this time I did find it excessive.  Still that was the only fault I found with the book.  McCourt spares no one in this book, finding fault with both of his parents, his larger family, the government, and the Catholic church.  But while the book can frequently feel angry, it is more often filled with humor and compassion.  McCourt brings his story to life: the malodor of the outhouse that's shared by the block but right next to the McCourt's house, the sting of the fleas, the misery of living in a house where for six months of the year, the family was forced to live on the second floor due to the flooding on the first floor.  McCourt is a master of the English language and writing in dialect.  I actually responded to my husband one night while reading this with an Irish accent.  Back on the shelf this book will go.  Someday I know I will read it again.

Friday Favorites

It's a two-fer this week on Friday Favorites! In honor of Frank McCourt, who recently passed away, I wanted to talk about "Angela's Ashes," McCourt's Pulitzer-prize winning memoir of his life growing up in Limerick, Ireland. I recently wrote that this is one of my all-time favorites. The McCourts had emigrated to the U.S. but returned to Ireland after Frank's sister died. Things progressively got worse for the family. McCourt's anger with the Catholic church, his father, poverty, and even his mother (Angela, for whom the book is titled) is evident throughout the book. But he writes without sounding bitter and is even able to find forgiveness. The story is written with a lot of humour, despite the bleakness of the family's day-to-day reality.


A book that's much less on the public's radar (but certainly deserves to be better known) is "The Invisible Wall" by Harry Bernstein, who wrote that book (and it's sequel) when he was in his 90's. Bernstein also grew up in abject poverty and was also the son of an alcoholic father. But Harry was Jewish and lived on a street, in an English mining town, with an invisible wall down the center of it. On one side of the street lived the Jewish families and one the other side were the Christian families. Although there were actually things that each side needed the other for, there was as little intermingling as possible. Then Harry's sister did the unthinkable--she fell in love with a Christian boy, sparking both a family and neighborhood crisis. Although Harry does not tell his story with the wit of McCourt, the story is told with eloquence and draws the reader in. Average rating for this one is 4.5/5 stars amongs the reader reviews on Barnes & Noble's web site.

Thanks to Alyce from At Home With Books for introducing me to the idea of My Favorite Reads!