The book came very quickly and I was delighted.   July 5, 2006

The masterpiece of Irish literature   January 23, 2002

Despite being published 70 years ago, the book still feels fresh and manages to blend fond memories and humour in an extraordinary way. This is definitely THE book to buy for anyone interested in the Irish way of life.


musha...what a great book!   November 19, 2000
  3 out of 3 found this review helpful

Twenty Years A-Growing by Maurice O'Sullivan is one heck of a "coming of age" story. I'd never even heard of it until a friend of mine told me that he was reading it. I'm sure glad he did. This is a great book!

I've actually read several coming of age stories recently. I didn't plan to...it just kind of occurred that way. Some of them were really good (David Copperfield by Dickens being one of them); but none of them, Copperfield included, spoke to my heart like Twenty Years A-Growing.

Twenty Years A-Growing was translated into English from Gaelic. I personally find this astounding. They (whoever "they" might be) say a book always loses something in translation. Yet Twenty Years absolutely sings in English...the translation is so powerful that the original must truly be a thing of beauty.

It is an autobiographical tale of growing up in the Blasket Islands off the coast of Ireland around the time of the first world war. For me at least, it was a thing of wonder to be able to enter into this world which has since moved on. It is a story told in a wonderfully simple yet almost lyrically beautiful way. Each chapter is a story in itself. The story as a whole slowly ingrains itself upon your heart and mind.

I felt an affinity with Maurice and his friend Thomas. The adventures they find themselves in ring true even as they entertain the reader. Likewise, the character of the grandfather in particular now feels like an old friend to me. I particularly appreciated some of the wisdom he espouses to Maurice.

I dare anyone to read this book and not be charmed by the lives of these wonderful people who lived almost a hundred years ago in a kind of societal setting that seems all at once foreign, yet somehow more sane than today's world of constant "time management" in pursuit of hollow "muchness" and "manyness."

It does not happen often that I do not to want a book to end. I usually approach the end of a book with satisfaction. Rarely am I left wanting more. Yet that was the case with Twenty Years A-Growing. It is a truly special book.


musha...what a great book!   November 18, 2000
  21 out of 21 found this review helpful

Twenty Years A-Growing by Maurice O'Sullivan is one heck of a "coming of age" story. I'd never even heard of it until a friend of mine told me that he was reading it. I'm sure glad he did. This is a great book!

I've actually read several coming of age stories recently. I didn't plan to...it just kind of occurred that way. Some of them were really good (David Copperfield by Dickens being one of them); but none of them, Copperfield included, spoke to my heart like Twenty Years A-Growing.

Twenty Years A-Growing was translated into English from Gaelic. I personally find this astounding. They (whoever "they" might be) say a book always loses something in translation. Yet Twenty Years absolutely sings in English...the translation is so powerful that the original must truly be a thing of beauty.

It is an autobiographical tale of growing up in the Blasket Islands off the coast of Ireland around the time of the first world war. For me at least, it was a thing of wonder to be able to enter into this world which has since moved on. It is a story told in a wonderfully simple yet almost lyrically beautiful way. Each chapter is a story in itself. The story as a whole slowly ingrains itself upon your heart and mind.

I felt an affinity with Maurice and his friend Thomas. The adventures they find themselves in ring true even as they entertain the reader. Likewise, the character of the grandfather in particular now feels like an old friend to me now. I particularly appreciated some of the wisdom he espouses to Maurice.

I dare anyone to read this book and not be charmed by the lives of these wonderful people who lived almost a hundred years ago in a kind of societal setting that seems all at once foreign, yet somehow more sane than today's world of constant "time management" in pursuit of hollow "muchness" and "manyness."

It does not happen often that I do not to want a book to end. I usually approach the end of a book with satisfaction. Rarely am I left wanting more. Yet that was the case with Twenty Years A-Growing. It is a truly special book.


Fascinating book about a life style gone by   March 14, 1999
  15 out of 15 found this review helpful

Twenty Years A-Growing, or Fiche Bliain ag Fas in its original Irish, is a humorous and well written book about the sometimes hard life at the great western island, An Blascaod Mor, off the cost of Ireland. It tells about the everyday of the islanders in the beginning of the century in a surprisingly modern and lively way. The language of the Island was Irish, and although the Great Blasket is now abandoned, the Irish language still lives on in the mainland parishes in this area. I strongly recommend this book to everyone interested in Ireland, its culture, the Irish language or readerswho just want a fun and good book. I myself have only read the whole of it in its Irish original, but the passes I've read in English shows a well-done translation