44: Dublin Made Me [Hardcover]

Peter Sheridan (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 1 and up

It is half an hour before midnight in the early 1960s and snow coats the cramped, gray streets of Dublin. On the rooftop of 44 Seville Place, a ten-year-old boy clings to the steel rod of a television antenna. When his father urges him to turn the antenna toward England, the boy reaches up and pictures from a foreign place beam into their home. And our young hero, Peter, and his family will never be the same again. As the tumultuous 1960s unfold, the Sheridan family--Ma and Da, Frankie, the baby, Shea (later to be known to the rest of the world as Academy Award-winning film director Jim Sheridan)--forges ahead into the unknown. Young Peter experiences all of life's mysteries--sex, music, The Beatles, loss, survival, drugs, the Troubles erupting just 60 miles away in Belfast, and above all, the seductive power of the theater. In this evocative and masterful portrait, we become a member of this charming and loving family as we explore the Dublin that shapes this young boy.
"--Sharp, jazzy, hilarious and often painful . . .You'll rejoice in this wild song of a book."--Frank McCourt

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Theater director Peter Sheridan's bracing memoir is timelessly Irish in its lyrical, word-drunk portrait of a boisterous family touched by tragedy: his younger brother, Frankie, died, aged 10, from a brain tumor. The book is also very much a document of the 1960s. It opens on New Year's Eve as 10-year-old Peter and his Da struggle to install a roof antenna: "Half an hour into 1960 we all sat staring at the television." The television goes on to play a major role in the Sheridans' perceptions of life beyond 44 Seville Place, Dublin, particularly when the Troubles explode across the border in Northern Ireland, their mother's birthplace. Rock & roll provides the soundtrack of Peter's youth, though theater becomes the lifeblood for him and older brother Shea (better known now as film director Jim Sheridan--My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father). Ending with the decade's last New Year's Eve, as he prepares to enter Trinity College, Sheridan closes a complex but seamless circle of metaphors and themes. His father finds the part necessary to fix their ancient TV, and when the family hears Da singing "Frankie and Johnny" in the bath for the first time since their Frankie's death, they know they have survived. --Wendy Smith --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Sheridan's crackling prose and details about Dublin life recall the fiction of Roddy Doyle, but this real-life story paints a brighter picture of the Irish family than does Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. With belly-laughs, sighs and tears, Sheridan recalls life at his home at 44 Seville Place during the 1960s, when he came of age, the Beatles made Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and the Americans walked on the moon. Looming large in the narrative is his ebullient father, whom we first see using cut-up pages of the Dublin phone book for toilet paper. "Da"'s comic mishaps include food poisoning from repairing his own false teeth, and blue and purple hair from an amateur dye job. Sheridan also pokes fun at himself, milking the classic autobiographical themes of ineptitude in sports and love. Fear of a sadistic teacher, the trauma of sexual predation and death in the family provide the darker memories of growing up. Sheridan, a prominent figure in contemporary Irish theater, was the first student from his local school in 25 years to go to university. With his brother, film director Jim Sheridan, he well represents the current cultural explosion in Ireland, and communicates the experiences and values that fuel today's rich artistic scene. Readers of this friendly, direct book will easily be able to picture the author telling his tales in a cozy Dublin pub. Penguin audio; author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 1 and up
  
• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1st edition (May 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670885142
• ISBN-13: 978-0670885145
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,868,018 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent look at sixties Dublin., June 30, 1999

By 

BDH (Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: 44: Dublin Made Me (Hardcover)

Peter Sheridan's Irish family makes for a cherished read. The loved and classic Beatles' "Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band" album is brought to life once again. In descibing his fathers makeshift bathroom, Sheridan says that he used a local telephone directory for toilet paper: "He's down to the r's ... He's now wiping his arse with the Rileys" Pure dry Irish humor at it's best! The story depicts a lucid view of a loving Dublin family through good times and bad times in the 1960's. Very worthwhile!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Rewarding Read, November 15, 2001

By 

Jayne MacManus (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 44: Dublin Made Me (Paperback)

In the opening chapter of his memoirs, Peter Sheridan pedals off on his bike to run an errand for his father. Even at the age of 8, there's no way he could get lost in his own city. He "loves the statues and monuments. If Dublin were a woman, he'd marry her."

*** "44 Dublin Made Me" will invariably be compared to Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes" on the sole count of being Irish. The Irish, however, are a diverse people, and life in Dublin is very different from life in Limmerick. McCourt's family faced scraping poverty, whereas Sheridan's family (by no means millionaires) have a steady home environment, food on the table, and the constant presence of both parents raising a large brood.

*** Peter Sheridan focuses on the decade of the 60s which begins with childhood innocence (getting a TV for the first time) and makes his way through adolescence and two defining events in the author's life -- a disturbing encounter on a train at age 13 and later the death of a family member.

*** Sheridan has a wonderful voice for storytelling. He stays true to his kid spirit and endears without being precious. And in fine Irish tradition, every laugh has a tragic edge and every sadness is survived by some beauty.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Lines Are So Fine, February 1, 2001

By 

taking a rest - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: 44: Dublin Made Me (Hardcover)

When you read a McCourt memoir you read of bleak reality, a reality rarely tempered with happiness much less joy. There is humor, however of the sort that more often increases your respect for those who are able to find humor where few could even imagine it. At times the light moments are not so light, just bright in comparison to what you have read. At the other end there is Brendan O'Carroll and his trilogy of, "The Mammy", "The Chisellers", and "The Granny". This is fiction and it is outrageously funny, so much so that when there is a tragic event the pain you feel from laughing often tempers the darker moments. And then there is Peter Sheridan's work, "44 Dublin Made Me". And this work lies somewhere between the two others I have mentioned.

I enjoyed the book a great deal. At times it is almost a hybrid of the other three Authors I mention, for even though it is a memoir and does contain painful events, they are not as painfully presented as I think they need to be for readers. I am in no manner diminishing the pain of the Sheridan Family; I am expressing a writing issue, or perhaps a stylistic point.

There seem to be more of these Irish Memoirs as of late, and as they have been widely read, they by definition either create or reinforce notions people may have already brought to the book. The issue that I struggled with was the manner in which some material was presented, some was absolutely funny, and other issues were anything but humorous. I don't believe they ever can be humorous. And this is the part of the book that failed for me. The writing was a bit too neat and slick for want of a better word. The experiences of a young child read as an accomplished Author had written them rather than a talented writer bringing the thoughts of a young man across as a child may view them, but as an adult would read them.

The book is very good and it's one I would recommend. I felt it worth noting that the story of any country or the people that live there can become a commodity. I don't believe that to be the case with this book, but I feel the first steps on a slippery slope are waiting to be trod upon.