Customer Reviews

September Song: A Cronicle of the O'Malley's in the Twentieth Century (O'Malley Novels (Forge Hardcover))

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The latest installment in the saga of the Crazy O'Malley's of Chicago is a time capsule from the 1960's and early 1970's. The book begins with Rosemarie and Chucky just after they met with Lyndon Johnson. Chuck had been Ambassador in Germany during JFK's administration, and both he and Rosemarie still mourn the loss of their President and the end of Camelot. The novel explores their liberal democratic politics as well as their connection with the Catholic Church.

They marched at Selma and met with Martin Luther King. They were at the hotel when Bobby Kennedy was shot. They watched with horrid fascination the Kent State riots. They saw the Vietnam War unfolding on the nightly news. They stood by helplessly unable to protect their oldest daughter as she participated in anti-war riots. Chuck went to Vietnam to take photographs. They were beaten by police during a Chicago convention. Chuck continued to chronicle the times through his photographs and was the official portrait photographer of each President. Somehow, the O'Malley's seemed to have a front row seat for the turmoil of the 60's and 70's. No trend or event of the time is left unmentioned, including Vatican II, the feminist movement, hippies, drugs, and Woodstock.

The O'Malley's are known for their ebullience and love of life, with large, joyous family gatherings featuring much singing and dancing, and that side of the clan is seen frequently throughout the novel. Rosemarie and Chucky, who have known each other since childhood, are still deeply in love and are raising a happy family of 5 children. However, the book is at times somber and grave, as befitted the turbulence and civil disobedience of the civil rights movement and the most unpopular war in American history.

The O'Malley's suffer tremendously when their oldest daughter, April, decides to drop out of Harvard and abandon her capitalistic family and find her own way. They also endure the agony of worry when their oldest son goes to Vietnam. Just when it seems that nothing else can go wrong for the O'Malley's, Greeley brings it all together for a satisfying conclusion and sets us up for the next installment which will be eagerly awaited by those of us who are following the trials and tribulations of the O'Malley's.

Greeley creates the Irish-American Forrest Gump in his delectable SEPTEMBER SONG. Chucky Ducky (a squatty, red headed Forrest) and the beautiful Rosemary are raising their five beautiful children as the events of the 1960s unfold and envelope them. Faithful readers will know more of the O'Malley story from A MIDWINTERS TALE, YOUNGER THAN SPRINGTIME and A CHRISTMAS WEDDING - as well as a character from one of my personal favorites, IN SEARCH OF MAGGIE WARD. Greeley delivers on his love of humanity, his deep seated faith (if not always an endorsement of the church) as well as a healthy dose of politics and some absolutely awesome music. This is one of those books that I wish had a CD inside! Before the book is over, the reader has either had a trip down memory lane or a history lesson, and feels a part of the Crazy O'Malley family of amazing women and good hearted men.

living through the 60's and 70's was more interesting than reading about it in this book. If you are interested in reading about it, get the book from the library and save your money. That is my opinion. Kaatja Wright

I have recently been introduced to Andrew Greeley's O'Malley Chronicles. The prose is good. The stories are heartwarming, even mawkish at times, but I love them. Thing more like Bing Crosby's The Bells of St Mary's or Going My Way.

They are about the O'Malley family, Chicago, Irish Catholics from the 1920s through the 1970s. Their lives, loves, problems. The center of the family is Charles O'Malley and his wife Rosemarie who are hopelessly in love with each other, and have been since they were 10 years old.

Chuck O'Malley, the hero, is a photographer. The main events of each decade are covered by him and woven into the stories: Korea, WWII, VietNam, Civil Rights, JFK, Chicago Democratic Convention. You see how these events affected him and his family.
If you are Catholic, there is a good deal of discussion of Church issues, which were of interest to me.

Greeley, in his typical story-telling fashion, traces an overview of American Society in the 1960s. For those who lived those years, it will bring back memories. For those who are too young, September Song will help understand those who lived it.
As Sociologist and observer of USA and Vatican politics, Greeley reveals his attitudes on the events of the 60s through the eyes of the story's narrator, Mrs. Rosemary O'Malley, a witty upper-middle class, liberal democrat matron. Of course, the story has it melodrama. It is fast moving, and drags in everybody who was anybody during that decade. Through Rosemary and the story of her family, Greeley is able to opine on a variety of events that marked American Society: politics post-JFK, Selma and Dr. King, the Vietnam disaster, the hippies and Woodstock, Vatican II, Humanae Vitae, the Chicago Democratic Convention, the feminist movement... I agree with his evaluation of the US government and Papal authority at that time...
I enjoyed the book. I enjoyed the memories. They clarify one's own story. Worth reading if you are a Greeley fan, and if you are interested in seeing the 1960s in retrospect.

Author/Father Andrew Greeley and the "Crazy O'Malleys" are back, this time getting through the turbulence of the 1960s at home in Chicago and abroad. The fictional family feels real and gives Father Greeley the opportunity to homilize the era. You gotta love a Priest with the moxie (albeit in Rosemarie's voice) to call the Papal Birth Control Encyclical "the damn thing!" p.214

Here is Chucky's memo to LBJ:
"During my recent trip to Vietnam, an American familiar with the situation characterized it as the greatest foul-up [actually that is not what the real quote says, the original is stronger, but I'm going to save this reviewer and the Amazon.com censors some rounds] in American history. I concur with that evaluation. Nothing I have heard in the briefings or in our discussions has caused me to change my mind. We are trapped in a quagmire that we have created for ourselves. At some point when the public realizes how it has been deceived there will be a demand that someone be blamed. I don't believe there will be any point in a search for blame. Every administration since 1945 made decisions which led with a high degree of probability to the present situation. We could have blocked the French when they tried to return to Indochina after the war. We could have refused to support them in their war against the Vietminh. We could have declined to assume responsibility for that part of the world when they left. We might have refused to send more military assistance in the first year of the Kennedy administration. Yet we did none of these things, indeed we barely considered them. Our decisions about Vietnam were as natural and as logical as our decisions about Greece and Turkey immediately after the war and about Korea in 1950. What is done is done." p.192

And the response?
"However, let it be recorded that on the Ides of March in 1968, the Senior Advisers told [LBJ] that the war could not be won. Any continuation of it over a substantial period of time for whatever reason is absolute folly." "As we all know now the war went on for seven more years. More men died in those years than had already died. They died for a cause that the leadership knew was lost. Terrible harm was done to the whole country." p.197

And what did we learn?
"The talking heads on the screen debated whether the "system" had worked.
"We survived `Nam and Watergate," I said. "Of course it worked."
"We would not have had to survive either," Chuck replied, "if it had not been for two assassins."

Well, maybe two conspiracies of assassins.
Amen, Father.