Maura's Boy : A Cork Childhood Book

Maura's Boy describes the first ten years of the life of Christy Kenneally, a working-class Cork northsider whose mother died when he was five years old. The book captures with remarkable effect that sorrow and the compensating love given by his father, Dave, his grandparents and a regiment of aunts, uncles and cousins. The life is a simple one yet full of the adventures provided by the Lane and the Quarry and other places in the wonderland that formed the landscape of his childhood. The picture of the city, with the fundamental schism between northside and southside, is a piece of closely observed social history of a time (1948-58) when the city had near full employment and hurling and films were the preoccupation of its youth. The book is as much about the place as the narrator, and beautifully conveys the sense of a lost golden age.