Light of Other Days: A Dublin Childhood

The same era (see above) is the setting for this refreshing look at a quieter time in Dublin. The daughter of Charles E. Kelly, director of broadcasting for Radio ireann and a founder of Dublin Opinion, Bracken grew up in Blackrock, a suburb south of Dublin. The author, herself a journalist for Radio Telefis ireann, draws a picture of a Catholic Ireland that although temporally close, seems a century old. Bracken describes households where ""[f]athers automatically got the outside of the roast... and just about everything good that was going."" Extramarital kissing was forbidden because, as everyone knew, ""the seed of a baby was located in the roof of a man's mouth."" It was a time when a zealous Irishness came in vogue, and Bracken recalls with dread the problems of mastering the Irish language: ""Don Quixote in Irish was well nigh incomprehensible to us."" There are fond remembrances of the Church with its rituals, perpetual novenas to Our Lady, visiting seven churches on Holy Thursday, and the relief of a good confession. Protestants, to the extent that Bracken thought of them, were separate, mysterious. She also recalls the politically incorrect Ireland of hams, roasts, stews and shepherd's pie where everyone but everyone smoked and ""fingers ranged in colour from palest lemon to darkest burnt-orange."" Bracken has written a thoroughly enjoyable visit into Ireland's past when the powerful economic ""Celtic Tiger"" was just a kitten. (Sept.)