Harvey, delivered by his grandmother in a thatched Irish cottage and raised in a London home wracked by alcoholism and violence, recreates the strange and remote realities of life in a postwar rural Ireland barely emerged from the 19th century and bomb-shattered London with “armless and legless veterans everywhere you turned.”
From time as a child in an orphanage to writing speeches for presidents, James Harvey travelled a rocky road to live out the American dream. In this memoir of his childhood, Harvey recreates the daily struggles of life in post-war rural Ireland and bomb-shattered London. This engrossing memoir grounds the struggles of the Harveys in both Irish history and British snobbery as the family fought for a place in the world. It takes the reader on a journey from the serenity of life in a rural thatched cottage ... through alcohol-fueled domestic violence in the Kilburn area bordering London’s Padding
