for
his rather aggressive and eccentric father, and extravagant appreciation
of his indomitable mother.
The book purports to be a memoir of the ten years between the author's eighth and eighteenth birthdays, beginning on the eve of the 1960s, but as he writes on page 192, when telling someone about getting stuck in the toilet, "I made a story of it. Added lots of colour. Lots of detail. I enjoyed telling her." And this is what he does with the whole book: incidents and quirks of character are built up into anecdotal yarns and events, painting a picture of his family through triumphs and disasters, which they share with a succession of oddball boarders and a host of relatives and neighbours.
Sheridan is better-known as a playwright, but he has made the leap from theatre to book with little obvious difficulty. There may not be much new in his picture of a male growing from childhood to adulthood, but it is done with skill and honesty, and should be appreciated by anyone with a leaning towards the tendency to wildness that still exists in 20th century Irish people.