The actor Eamon Kelly's life - he was born in 1914 - has spanned much of the history of modern Ireland. This is the story of his boyhood and early youth spent in Carrigeen, a small village in Kerry. As Kelly the professional storyteller has rendered ordinary conversation into an art form, the reader approaches this memoir, with high expectations. It's charming and chronicles the rituals of rural life: the now lost craft of wheel making, bringing in the hay, the complex slaughter of a pig, all overshadowed, of course, by the spectre of emigration. The tone is remote, detached almost melancholic, far less lively than that of Alice Taylor. Kelly is clearly concerned with recording the story of a forgotten world, rather than merely providing an account of his personal adventures. Near its close, though, he recalls a first romance which ends with the girl announcing she is off to England. Far more moving than her abrupt departure is Kelly's account of how a simmering row with his mother and their eventual reconciliation helped him to grasp the depth of his love for her. Gentle and gracefully written, the book makes no reference to acting, his third career, which was not to begin until he was almost 50, after he had already worked as a carpenter before becoming a woodwork teacher. In common with Alice Taylor, Kelly is contributing to our understanding of Irish social history.
