You see them both at once and you feel them both at once: the emotions generated in you by the story carry over instantly and applicably to the life outside the book... read more
At first there are seven McCourt children in this always present-tense tale, but by the end, as Mr. McCourt returns to New York, there are only four, the others having died of childhood diseases... read more
Her parents, debonair English Protestants devoted to an active social life, banished their only daughter with bizarre dispatch, sending her, at the age of 4, to a French Canadian convent school... read more
The watershed events of Indian history intrude. The denouement is pyrotechnical. But hidden in this carnivalesque wrapping is a bitter cautionary tale... read more
We learn of one of her not-quite-interchangeable heroines: ''Gloria once took a creative writing course, and what the instructor told her was: Too many things... read more
He is an accomplished essayist and a novelist and his book is a richly elaborated work of literary craftsmanship full of roaring adventures, madcap flights of imagination and people wilder than the animals they stalk with him... read more
