Airs of Providence

An Irish Catholic neighborhood in the 1950s and '60s is the backdrop for these 15 stories (only one of which has been previously published), which treat the reader to some very credible slices of life. McGarry arranges her tales in such a way that every other one deals with the exploits of two sisters, Margery and April Flanaghan. The author makes it easy for readers to enter into the girls' lives as they struggle with the rites of passage of childhood and adolescence: trying to satisfy the demanding nuns at school, preparing for the prom, babysitting for the first time. And through it all the sisters must contend with their mother's sarcasm and their father's temper. The book's alternating stories introduce a variety of colorful individuals and round out McGarry's sometimes sad, sometimes amusing and always very real portrait of a working-class neighborhood. November 8