RARE HOURS OF HAPPINESS

A debut memoirist recounts his childhood in 1930s-40s Ireland.

“During our childhood, the language of feelings was not part of our vocabulary,” Fitzgerald writes in the book’s opening chapter, adding, “We learned to be mute and deaf to our own pains and to those of others.” This sets the tone for a memoir that both surveys the author’s own childhood and offers a nuanced reflection on Irish history and the national psyche. Much of the book’s analysis is a critique of the stranglehold of traditional Roman Catholicism on Irish culture and life from the vantage of a young child. Dedicating the book to his classmates at the Ballyfin boarding school, Fitzgerald writes that, “we were all treated the same as far as abuse by some teachers was concerned,” noting that “the teachers and priests were always right and complaining about it only got us more abuse at home.” Blended into the book’s generally disconsolate narrative are some tongue-in-cheek instances of dark humor, such as when the author celebrates a moment in the 1940s when “witchcraft ended in our district” as a local veterinarian finally convinced hesitant local farmers to vaccinate their cattle. Another story explains the author’s lifetime association of apple cake with sex as he recounts the dessert’s connection to mating pigs and his “front seats to the daily drama of sex” on a farm.

While the book’s depiction of Depression-era Ireland offers a page-turning combination of religious oppression, emotional negligence, and boyhood mischief, what truly stands out in this memoir is the author’s ability to connect his autobiography to the larger cultural history of Ireland. (Indeed, this is just as much a book about Irish history as it is the author’s childhood.) Per Fitzgerald’s cogent thesis, “Saint Patrick’s gift of light” to the isle was replaced by “the dark shadow of Saint Augustine,” in particular his doctrine of original sin; in teaching Irish Catholics that every human, down to the smallest infant, is inherently evil, the national psyche was warped to eschew feelings of love, empathy, or emotional connection. (As an immigrant to America later in life, Fitzgerald watched from afar as revelations of sexual abuse scandals began to liberate Irish minds from the power of the Church.) He comments on the transformation of Ireland joining the European Community (later renamed the European Union). Nuanced in his analysis, the author notes that the geopolitical movement brought about increased equality for women and new rights for the marginalized—but he also highlights the ways in which the European Community decimated rural economies, including his own family’s farm. Backed by Fitzgerald’s first-hand knowledge of 20th-century Irish history and a three-page research bibliography, this memoir successfully connects the life of an impoverished, anonymous Irish boy to a larger national narrative of cultural oppression and change. The book offers a gritty portrait of deprivation and oppression even as the author avoids wallowing in self-pity. “That’s the Irish spirit for you,” Fitzgerald writes with characteristic dark humor, “instead of getting rid of the suffering, they try to save it.”

A poignant, insightful memoir and history of Depression-era Ireland.