Rare tale of the happy days: Colbert Kearney's memoir on growing up in Dublin

A family memoir by former UCC lecturer Colbert Kearney has none of the misery of other accounts of working-class life in Ireland after independence, writes Marjorie Brennan.

Tales of childhood suffering and adversity are not in short supply in Irish literature, with Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt often give credit — or blame, perhaps — for kickstarting the phenomenally popular genre of the ‘misery memoir’.