Memory through the looking glass   April 6, 2000

Healy should be more widely read in America, if only because his is an original voice in a new key, Irish accent or not.


An English memoir ?   August 4, 1999
  1 out of 11 found this review helpful

The cover picture is not Irish but is a photograph of the small town in ENGLAND where I grew up !


Refeshing!!!   September 14, 1998
  3 out of 3 found this review helpful

Dermot Healy doesn't write like Frank McCourt or anyone else, he writes his memior like Dermot Healy. Accept that and you are off to a good start to be able to appreciate his memior.What I found refershing about his way of writing was he did it more to a way that people do tend to recall their lives. It isn't always in direct synchronization,neat,tidy,perfect. We wander,there are impressions we gather because we don't always recall exact verbatum of conversations - here is where writers must embellish a bit creatively.Try to recall your own life to date, try to think of writing it. This isn't so scattered you can't make out what he is talking about but it is written in a style where we are guided to meander with him through his memories,thoughts,impressions.I think we tend to recall our lives by a more personal set of perceptions rather than _always_ an objective,clear-cut unbiased point of view. He doesn't make excuses or seem to be trying to draw pity, he reveals himself to be ultimately human, we self-inflict our own pain most of the time, we set our selves up for a good kick in the teeth. Our lives aren't always so neat and edited.

The one thing I did notice missing from his memior (which initiates at childhood,flashes into youthful adult and weaves back into adolesence and then again forward to his mother being into her 80's and I would suppose him in to his 40's)is what happened during his 30's, and later a marriage. We are only briefed that he has had a daughter to whom a woman he didn't marry - there is no story of that relationship nor of his later marriage which also he quickly mentions. It leads me to feel these were not details he felt ready to share - understandingly likely because these people are still living and out of respect for privacy of their lives - none the less it would have done no harm to bare out a little more understanding, however basic which could have been done respectfully. I noticed the same with Frank McCourt's book- Angela's Ashes - he neither went into more of his life leading up to marriage or after it. The Bend for Home is a really well written book, just know it is _not_ written in the run of the mill manner in which we are used to finding on bookshelves for sale, he writes in an unappologetic fashion which displays his unique creativity as a writer.Great job, Dermot!!!


Don't read Angela's Ashes first.   August 24, 1998
  6 out of 9 found this review helpful

After reading Angela's Ashes and Dublin Girl, I craved more gritty Irish memoirs. Unfortunately this seemed disjointed and self-indulgent to me. Many of the author's trials seemed self-inflicted, in contrast to the poverty and family tribulations exposed by the other writers.


Enchanting and poignant   February 2, 1998
  3 out of 3 found this review helpful

I picked up a copy of this book while visiting Ireland last summer and was not disappointed. The writing is stunningly vivid and poetic. Best of all, Healy ensures that the reader never quite knows what is real and what isn't.