A Dublin Girl: Growing Up in the 1930s
Books / Hardcover
Books › Biography & Autobiography › Literary
ISBN: 1569471126 / Publisher: Soho Pr Inc, February 1998
Documents the author's childhood detailing her mother's desperate wish for a house of their own, her father's unfaithfulness and promiscuity, her mother's attempt to end the affair and the beating that ensued, and the devasting aftermath of the tuberculosis epidemic
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Elaine Crowley's mother had two ambitions: To be "on the pig's back" (out of debt and with some money to spare) and to have a private house. Meanwhile, she lives with her husband and three children in one room in a Dublin tenement over a shop, sharing a bathroom on the landing with the neighbors.Elaine is the eldest, her charming, handsome father's pet, and also an observer: of the crowded streets of the district in which the children play; of Iveagh market; of her mother's visits to the local money-lender; of the nuns at school, the same one her mother and grandmother went to. She is also the innocent witness to her father's infidelity, a participant in her mother's effort to end the affair and the terrified observer of her father's brutal beating of her mother.She gets her first job at age fourteen in order to support the family as her beloved father succumbs to TB, the plague that haunts the district. And finally, ironically, both her mother's wishes come true.
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