A TIPSY FAIRY TALE

Murphy recounts his tumultuous childhood in New York City and travels to his birthplace in Wales in a memoir interspersed with his poetry.

In a preface, the author notes that writing “helped me rise from the ashes and give it another go.” Via second-person narration, he shares his life story: Murphy’s American father, Eddie, met the author’s mother, Thelma, whose family operated the Windsor Castle Hotel (“neither a castle nor a hotel, but a run-down pub in Newport, a run-down city in South Wales”), when he was stationed abroad during World War II. The couple settled in New York City, but Thelma was unhappy, per Murphy, who recalls her behavior through his child’s-eye view. The author and his brother were sent off to a brutal Catholic boarding school, then returned to live with Eddie, who remarried following Thelma’s death when Murphy was 7. The author started writing poetry at age 15—also the age he started drinking. Blackouts contributed to bungled jobs and failed attempts at college. Murphy landed a job managing a nightclub and got involved with an unstable go-go dancer, from whom he fled by taking an extended trip to Wales upon turning 21. There, the author learned more about Thelma and embraced the Baha’i faith, which helped point the way toward sobriety and a career as a writer and educator. Murphy, the founder of the writing institute that bears his name at New Jersey’s Stockton University, marvelously deploys the “you” voice to convey disassociation and gallows humor of his coming of age and addiction-recovery journey; here, he describes his relationship with the dancer: “You become an item. A broken item, but an item, nonetheless.” While the book has heartbreak aplenty, including inappropriate “wrestling” with a priest and Eddie’s later-in-life bombshell revelations about Thelma, this memoir also joyfully celebrates the power of poetry—Murphy shares his discovery of Wordsworth’s work and includes a selection of his own expressive poems.

Evocative observations and relatable struggles characterize this poetic remembrance.