- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins; New edition edition (1 Oct 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0007116446
- ISBN-13: 978-0007116447
- Product Dimensions: 20.1 x 12.9 x 1.7 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 718,385 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
‘A surprisingly tender McCourt disarms the reader with his openness and dextrous touch…the charming rogue has transformed into a satisfied, contemplative – and still charming – paterfamilias’
Publishers Weekly (USA)
Praise for A Monk Swimming:
‘Masterful storytelling is undoubtedly part of the McCourt genetic code’
Morning Star Telegram
Product Description
Malachy McCourt, actor, gadfly and raconteur follows up his international best sellerA Monk Swimming with this, the second instalment of his hilarious memoirs.
Malachy McCourt grew up in Limerick amid death, squalor, poverty and abuse. When he went to America as a young man, he took with him a gargantuan appetite for what life had to offer – and an equal drive to forget what it had delivered so far. In A Monk Swimming, he caroused his way all over the world, becoming a familiar face in movies and television, and in bars from Paris to Calcutta.
Now he tells us the rest of the story – how he went from world-class drunk to sober and loving father and grandfather. Bawdy and funny, naked and moving, and told in the same inimitable voice that left readers all over the world wondering what happened next, he tells as honest and entertaining a story as you could hope for.
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First Sentence
On Sunday afternoons in 1963, the summer I worked in a Hamptons hosterly called the Watermill, myself and assorted staff would adjourn to the beach, armed with a largish cooler chock-full of ice, vodka, and orange juice. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
On Sunday afternoons in 1963, the summer I worked in a Hamptons hosterly called the Watermill, myself and assorted staff would adjourn to the beach, armed with a largish cooler chock-full of ice, vodka, and orange juice. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Singing My Him Song is the sequel to A Monk Swimming, and Malachy is the brother of Frank McCourt... Now Malachy is a bit older and wiser, and finaly confronts his alcoholproblem... The whole atmosphere is kind of selfcritical, cos the book is about the journey from a bad life to a good one, and it is written from a point of view where Malachy has realized howe stupid he was... All in all the sequel is just as good as the first book, but stil not as good as Frank's books. The brothers kind of have the same humorous style and attitude to life, but Malachy is tougher and writes about different things. Sometimes Malachys life doen't actually always feel so interesting to me. After all he was only a wannabe actor, and the search for jobs (which weren't that fancy or which he didn't get at all) seamed endless sometimes. But Malacy does write in a great funny style. But the truth is of course still that I would never have picked up the book (let alone heard of it) if it wasn't for Frank (and my love for his books).
And as for the title: Frankly, I don't get what Malachy means with it. It wasn't refered to anywhere in the book (if I didn't miss something...) Singing my him song... Singing I get, but what does this him refer to? Malacy's former self, the hopeless drunk? And on the cover above the titel of the book there are the numbers 63 and 64. What that symbolises I don't get either... Odd.
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is most definitely a book of two halves: schizophrenic. The first half is riddled with stories and lamentations and humour. The second half is an outpouring concomitant on the childhood his brother Frank described as the worst kind of childhood of all: Irish and Catholic. This is a stinging indictment; but both Malachy and Frank write as if they have been truly stung.
Malachy's life has been full: bar work, television work, stage work, film work. Marriage, children, travel. Alcoholism, Catholicism and molestation. All have shaped the life that followed his childhood in Limerick.
I came away from this book, read in one sitting, feeling that I would have enjoyed being a patron at one or more of his bars: he has definitely kissed the Blarney Stone. He comes across as witty and outright funny. He is also intense and can hold his own when it comes to serious debate.
He was a man out of his time, perhaps, as he got embroiled in all sorts of wranglings with authority; and these tussles cost him job after job. The 1960s to the 1980s were a watershed for Lobbyists in the USA and Europe; and Malachy played his part, by furthering the cause on his radio programmes and chat shows and by taking part in demonstrations and marches.
...His grandmother used to berate the fact that the McCourts were a mixture of pure Irish and the Irish from the North, his father being an Ulsterman. His mother, Angela, had something of the same in her as she commented on the fact that Malachy and Frank had married outside of 'their own': "Ye can't cross the floor without falling over a little Protestant or a little Jew."
Another pithy saying, from Malachy himself this time, is "Warning: Always steer clear of organizations with the word "Benevolent" in their name!"
Malachy met his wife, Diana, on a beach and she was really the rock solid foundation on which the life of their children was founded. He comes to realise that in spite of himself he had become just like his father: an absentee and an alcoholic with a penchant for good for nothingness...A very interesting recurrent theme, I should say, is Diana's daughter from a previous liaison, Nina. Nina has a physical/mental problem and her life and treatment are treated with respect and tenderness as we see what life in the USA had to offer this poor girl.
There's a lot of good old Irish life and humour in this book and there's a lot of what looks like psychotherapy, too. Part way through the book he makes a kind of apology on a book signing tour for not being his brother Frank! He needn't have apologized to me: I really enjoyed Angela's Ashes but I didn't enjoy 'Tis anywhere near as much. I enjoyed Singing My Him Song, although I can't fathom the title!
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I didnt particulary enjoy this book, however I did continue to read it in the hope it would improve!! I found Malachy evasive over parts of his life and probably only skimmed the surface. I felt he name dropped alot to impress and make his life sound more interesting. I didnt warm to him and his problems at all as he came across quite arrogant and without feeling. I did wonder to the reason for this book and then found out at the end of the book that he had been asked to write it as Frank McCourt ..his brother had wrote in international bestseller!!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Unashamedly funny
Inspired heaps of empathy and tears of laughter to run freely. No matter where this worldly traveler goes he has a knack for getting to the action. Read more
Published on 16 Feb 2008 by MYB74
Unashamedly funny
Inspired heaps of empathy and tears of laughter to run freely. No matter where this worldly traveler goes he has a knack for getting to the action. Read more
Published on 16 Feb 2008 by MYB74
Brilliant
I bought this book, coincidentally, on my first trip to New York and found it to be easily readable, entertaining, humorous, intelligent but also very dark. Read more
Published on 18 Aug 2002 by Father Jack
Not as good as his brother, Frankly
Following on from his wild collection of craic stories in A Monk Swimming, McCourt deviates dramatically from what people with a sense of humour thought was a hilarious and... Read more
Published on 24 Mar 2001
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