A Limerick to sob for

Skeletons with ragged hair and rotting teeth, Frank and his surviving siblings somehow manage to survive on charity and rare employment in 1940s Limerick. This isn’t an action book, just a fairly straightforward coming of age memoir, but the honesty and immediacy sucks you right in. You are there, fainting with hunger and weak with cold, clinging to life in some pungent slum, where the sewage floods through the tumbledown hovel you call home, and the height of paradise is cold fish and chips scrounged from a drunken soldier.

Kickboxed set

I’ve given it five stars. Not for the great literary merit of the writing. Realistically, it’s what you’d expect from a journalist. But for the intricate plot, the complex characters – and their relationships – and the way it drags the reader along without resorting to too many simple tricks.