Forget about Dil Chahta Hai- This book is the granddaddy of all coming-of-age tales. Never have I come across a book so independent of self-pity.
The scene is set - an Irish boy Malachy, living in the slums of Limerick, Ireland.
This is an autobiography of Frank McCourt, and as far as I am concerned, he provides the watermark for me to judge all other autobiographies by. His writing is graceful, smooth and entirely independent of self pity, despite the unimaginable surroundings he grew up in.
The author’s style of writing is like gentle and flowing, modest and graceful. Yet it has the bite, that saves it from being one-of-those-books and catapults it to a must-read and will-always-remember.
There is not a single double-quotes punctuation mark in the whole book - I guess they cramp the author’s style.
The dialogues just meld into the sentence and do not stand out. Looking back, I guess that just adds to the charm of the book.
Malachy is born in Brooklyn, in the US of A. His family moves to Ireland soon after his birth, to the town of Limerick. To all those of you, for whom Ireland is a misty green paradise full of leprechauns - Limerick is a cold, grey foggy town, bang in the middle of nowhere, where people die of starvation in their damp, dark flats built fifty to a building, all sharing the same two or three latrines.
Malachy and his siblings grow up in this quaint, dreamlike town. His mother is Angela, the quintessential poor irish mother.
His father is inconsistent, a frequenter of every pub that Limerick has, and in a way, the most magical character of all. He even makes shaking bed-lice out of a damp mattress an interesting job, pointing out the little jumping insects out to his son. A born charmer, and a resigned drunk, he is never quite sober. Much of young Malachy’s life is spent traversing the damp streets of Limerick, going to pub after pub after pub, searching for his father.
The book is filled with other incidents relating to school, girls, and a painful, confusing pubescence - to - adolescence.
This book is not one that will leave you happy and glowing as you close it. It is one that will haunt you for days on end, after you put it down. It is one of my lasting regrets that I never bought the book. I read it out of the library at Taj Fisherman’s Cove, Covelong; but I was sorely tempted to steal it.
Here’s the upshot of this review : Buy the book!