She told him that his father would be tired, but, tired as he was, he wouldn't be without a smile before he washed himself and he wouldn't be so without his manners to forget to say grace before they ate and that he, the boy, should watch the way the father would smile when the books were produced for homework, for learning was a wonder to him, especially the Latin. She sat with her hands in her lap and talked to him about someone up the road who had had an airmail letter from America. Everything was so simple, especially the way they waited. Red-rimmed butter dish with a slab of butter, the shape of a swan dipping its head imprinted on its surface.
She put out a blue-and- white jug full of milk and a covered dish of potatoes in their jackets and a It was an account of his mother setting the table for the evening meal and then waiting with him until his father came in from the fields. The English teacher read out a model essay which had been, to our surprise, written by a country boy. I was moved by the narrator’s revealing an elementary school experience which stimulated his own writing form:
I found it exciting to see each of these short pieces appearing as separate units, yet slowly and surely coalescing to form a vivid picture of life in his neighborhood. We read of classroom experiences in elementary school, his growing awareness of girls as he grows up, Irish legends and fairy tales, the death of his sister as experienced from his four year old perception and on and on. These pieces are beautifully written, insightful of the essence of the experience and compellingly believable. They are written as experiences in and around his family, school and church world. These are tied together by being presented as memories or stories heard by the unnamed narrator. The first book is composed of non-connected vignettes of life in a Catholic working class neighborhood between 1945-1968 in Derry, Northern Ireland. There is a sense in which this is two separate books woven into one successful unit.
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