John Boyle: Galloway Street

By DAVID HILL*

The only cultural manifestation exceeding the spate of Irish dance troupes appears to be Irish literary memoirs. They usually record paradoxically privileged childhoods, so grindingly poor that they guarantee at least 300 pages of stoic, folksy reminiscence in later life.

Here's another of them. John Boyle grew up in an immigrant labourer's family in Paisley - the Scottish place famous for bright patterns, not the Irish person infamous for bigoted polemic.

It's just after World War II. John and his siblings live on the top floor of a blackened tenement, with one cold tap and slimy interior walls. He goes to school, learns from Mrs O'Neill what a dot is, from Mother Stanislaus what a catechism is, gets in trouble for asking who made God, then?

It's the sort of autobiography in which every boyhood moment inflates into an emblem: the visitors who talk of home; the stillborn sister; the stories at night; the ragman; the fight with the Proddie bully.

John becomes an altar boy, finds his trousers getting tight at inappropriate times, gets taken out the back of the lavvie by little Maggie, starts feeling differently about those moments in the pictures when the cowboy kisses the lady.

Familiar stuff, and narrated with rushing energy in a small boy's voice, as he part-comprehends grownups' coded talk and their prejudice that views a marching band as a devil's emissary.

There's an affecting sequence when a friend is killed; others when a pet dog is put down, or Boyle realises the failings of his drunken, darling Dad. Yet ... am I the only sour and cynical swine who feels that the emotion and spontaneity keeps edging towards sentiment and manipulation?

Some passages bloat into blarney. We take our sad songs and make them better ... we are lost souls whistling in the dark. Get on with it, man.

This is an author blessed (if that is the right verb) with near-total recall. Do we need five pages on how he cons his slow friend into lending him another Beano? Maybe. Do we need so much phonetic fidelity? After the first 100 pages of "It's nae wunner ur aue yin fun oot!", my eyes were swimming.

Enjoy the anecdotal ease, the flow, the affection and honesty. Wonder if the vital, vibrant street life wasn't really pretty dreary much of the time. Think guiltily how you rather look forward to memoirs of a Sloane childhood.

Black Swan

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* David Hill is a Taranaki writer.