Maura's Boy

This autobiography describes the first ten years of the life of Christy Kenneally, a working-class Cork northsider who lost his mother when he was five years old. The book captures the 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 lightly expressed, but fundamental schism between northside and southside, is a piece of social history dating from 1948-1958, when the city had near-full employment, and hurling and films were the preoccupation of its youth.