Customer Reviews

Twenty Years A-Growing

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Twenty Years A-Growing by Maurice O'Sullivan is one heck of a "coming of age" story. I'd never even heard of it until a friend of mine told me that he was reading it. I'm sure glad he did. This is a great book!

I've actually read several coming of age stories recently. I didn't plan to...it just kind of occurred that way. Some of them were really good (David Copperfield by Dickens being one of them); but none of them, Copperfield included, spoke to my heart like Twenty Years A-Growing.

Twenty Years A-Growing was translated into English from Gaelic. I personally find this astounding. They (whoever "they" might be) say a book always loses something in translation. Yet Twenty Years absolutely sings in English...the translation is so powerful that the original must truly be a thing of beauty.

It is an autobiographical tale of growing up in the Blasket Islands off the coast of Ireland around the time of the first world war. For me at least, it was a thing of wonder to be able to enter into this world which has since moved on. It is a story told in a wonderfully simple yet almost lyrically beautiful way. Each chapter is a story in itself. The story as a whole slowly ingrains itself upon your heart and mind.

I felt an affinity with Maurice and his friend Thomas. The adventures they find themselves in ring true even as they entertain the reader. Likewise, the character of the grandfather in particular now feels like an old friend to me now. I particularly appreciated some of the wisdom he espouses to Maurice.

I dare anyone to read this book and not be charmed by the lives of these wonderful people who lived almost a hundred years ago in a kind of societal setting that seems all at once foreign, yet somehow more sane than today's world of constant "time management" in pursuit of hollow "muchness" and "manyness."

It does not happen often that I do not to want a book to end. I usually approach the end of a book with satisfaction. Rarely am I left wanting more. Yet that was the case with Twenty Years A-Growing. It is a truly special book.

Twenty Years A-Growing, or Fiche Bliain ag Fás in its original Irish, is a humorous and well written book about the sometimes hard life at the great western island, An Blascaod Mór, off the cost of Ireland. It tells about the everyday of the islanders in the beginning of the century in a surprisingly modern and lively way. The language of the Island was Irish, and although the Great Blasket is now abandoned, the Irish language still lives on in the mainland parishes in this area. I strongly recommend this book to everyone interested in Ireland, its culture, the Irish language or readerswho just want a fun and good book. I myself have only read the whole of it in its Irish original, but the passes I've read in English shows a well-done translation

I first read this wonderful book when on vacation in County Kerry, Ireland. I was only 13 years old at the time but the book entranced me because of its humour, sensitivity and overwhelming innocence. The author describes the first twenty years of his life growing up on an isolated island (The Great Blasket) off the southwest coast of Ireland .

Life on the island was so very different to that in the rest of Europe. Gaelic (Irish) was the language used by the community with no English used at all. The book was originally published in Irish and then translated into English whilst preserving all the old colloquial expressions (e.g. "your soul to the devil, that's talk in the air, the sun was hot enough to break stones, My love forever Eileen!" etc.). Life on the island was simple in the extreme with the community living on fish they caught themselves and food they grew on their sparse amounts of land. The book is a rich narrative of many stories and events, thoughts and dreams, humor and sadness within the "riotous beauty" that is South Kerry and the Blasket islands.

The writer did not intend for his book to be read by a wider audience than his own people and that is the book's central beauty. Read it if you want to discover a lost world of innocence, ancient tales, fear, bravery, sadness, hilarity and splendid isolation.

This is an extraordinary book, described by the well-know author E.M. Forster as "here is the egg of a seabird - lovely, perfect and laid this very morning".

The author, Muiris Ó Súilleabháin, is an Irish-speaking boy growing up on the Great Blasket Island (An Blascaod Mór). He describes his childhood in the twenties on this 100% Irish-speaking island in Co. Kerry. The population of the island never reached 200, and life there was very archaic - resembling the society in Europe thousands of years ago. Nowhere else in Europe did the shear joy of speaking and love of words live on as here, where thousands of pages of folklore has been collected as well. This love of the language is obvious in this vivid book, in which Muiris presents an affectionate, lively and interesting account of a way of life that no longer is.

Despite being published 70 years ago, the book still feels fresh and manages to blend fond memories and humour in an extraordinary way. This is definitely THE book to buy for anyone interested in the Irish way of life.

Twenty Years A-Growing is a delightful collection of stories put together to form a novel. It is not great action or plot that draws one to this book. It is the shear joy of the art of the story teller. This book is a fine example of the ancient tradition of story telling. When a "wanderer" visits the author's house, his grandfather says, "he who travels has tales to tell." The stranger is invited to pull up a chair to the fire and help "shorten the night" with his tales. Good stories do not require a TV or a radio, or for that matter, even a book. Good stories only require a good story teller and a good audience. Twenty Years A-Growing is good story telling

Twenty Years A-Growing by Maurice O'Sullivan is one heck of a "coming of age" story. I'd never even heard of it until a friend of mine told me that he was reading it. I'm sure glad he did. This is a great book!

I've actually read several coming of age stories recently. I didn't plan to...it just kind of occurred that way. Some of them were really good (David Copperfield by Dickens being one of them); but none of them, Copperfield included, spoke to my heart like Twenty Years A-Growing.

Twenty Years A-Growing was translated into English from Gaelic. I personally find this astounding. They (whoever "they" might be) say a book always loses something in translation. Yet Twenty Years absolutely sings in English...the translation is so powerful that the original must truly be a thing of beauty.

It is an autobiographical tale of growing up in the Blasket Islands off the coast of Ireland around the time of the first world war. For me at least, it was a thing of wonder to be able to enter into this world which has since moved on. It is a story told in a wonderfully simple yet almost lyrically beautiful way. Each chapter is a story in itself. The story as a whole slowly ingrains itself upon your heart and mind.

I felt an affinity with Maurice and his friend Thomas. The adventures they find themselves in ring true even as they entertain the reader. Likewise, the character of the grandfather in particular now feels like an old friend to me. I particularly appreciated some of the wisdom he espouses to Maurice.

I dare anyone to read this book and not be charmed by the lives of these wonderful people who lived almost a hundred years ago in a kind of societal setting that seems all at once foreign, yet somehow more sane than today's world of constant "time management" in pursuit of hollow "muchness" and "manyness."

It does not happen often that I do not to want a book to end. I usually approach the end of a book with satisfaction. Rarely am I left wanting more. Yet that was the case with Twenty Years A-Growing. It is a truly special book.

Twenty Years A-Growing was published in 1933, four years after Tomas O'Crohan's The Islandman, which was the first of the books about the Blasket Island lifeway written in Irish and republished in English at a moment when "pre-modern" communities of the newly-free Ireland became subjects of fascination to some members of the former colonial ruling class. This volume includes a forward by E. M. Forster describing the Blasketers as "neolithic," a period which began 9500 years ago and was characterized by humans wearing animal skins and using bone tools. It's hard to believe he actually read the book since it is the life story of Maurice O'Sullivan, who spoke and read only English until he moved back to the island of his birth as a youth, an island which had mail delivery -- they could read and write!?! -- and a school for their children -- they endorsed universal literacy!?! -- and young O'Sullivan had no trouble passing the civil service exam to become a policeman -- they measured up to "modern" humans!?! This book stands out from the other Blasket classics as a more personal story that's less concerned with capturing the island lifeway than in describing the incidents and emotions of a young islander. Because of the personal focus and because I'd already read O'Crohan's Islandman, Peig Sayer's Reflections (1962) and Eibhlis Ni Shuilleabhain's Letters (1978), I found this book less interesting than the others. As a coming of age story it works very well, and it paints of vivid picture of the extraordinary setting. Two things really stood out for me in this book. First, the fact that the German attacks on shipping in World War I were a boon to the islanders who would wake up some mornings to discover their island surrounded by the floating cargo of doomed ships, including the Lusitania, and built special storerooms to hold all their booty. Second, the heartache and regret with which O'Sullivan departed the Great Blasket, one of the last holdouts of a young generation which concluded that the special magic of their homeplace no longer outweighed the physical isolation and extreme hardship of living there. The boom of the Great War proved to be a brief reprieve. By the mid-twenties, O'Sullivan was gone, and by 1953, the island was finally abandoned by its last inhabitants.

I haven't yet read the book but I will submit a review when completed. However the book came highly recommended to me by many people. they found it a delightful memoir and as i just returend from the Dingle Peninsula, i wanted to read it myself.