Malachy McCourt is Frank McCourt's brother and in the Preface to this book Malachy says:

I was a smiley little fella with a raging heart and murderous instincts. One day I would show THEM - yes, you rotten f****** *rsehole counter-jumping stuck-up jumped-up whore's melts nose-holding tuppence ha'penny-looking-down-on-tuppence snobs. I'll go back to America where I was born and fart in yer faces.

He says he did fart in their faces: I say he shat all over himself.

This is a very funny book and Malachy has a good style that belies someone whose life started in the way that brother Frank has revealed.

Why does Malachy start by venting so much bile? Well, take a look at www.limerick.com and read what they have to say there about the McCourts and you'll see why Malachy says he'll fart in their faces. Read the book and you'll see why I say he didn't fart in anyone's face but his own.

The brief history of the McCourt family is that they lived in the USA went to Ireland where the children then spent the rest of their childhoods: in Limerick. The McCourt father was a drunkard, absentee Ulsterman who ended up in Coventry and spent many months in jail for being drunk and disorderly and all the rest of it. This book and Frank's books spell out what he and his family thought of his father.

In spite of everything that Frank and Malachy say about their father, Malachy BECAME his father. He became a drunkard; and a violent one at that. He courted and married an attractive young woman and almost immediately abused her by absenting himself and then leaving her almost alone to cope with their child, then their children. When his wife realised that she didn't want him any more because of his appalling behaviour, he flew into a rage and smashed her life; he threatened her family and he was carted away to jail. Even whilst he was in jail, he railed against his friend who was supposed to be putting up the bail to release him: such an ungrateful slob.

In the meantime, McCourt was drinking to massive excess, fighting because HE was angry and had to take it out on someone, he was sleeping around and he fell in with people who were prepared to let him drift in and out of their lives, houses and parties.

Malachy McCourt seems to be the kind of man you'd like at a party to get the singsong going, to cajole even the most anal retentive Englishman to open up and have a good time ... until he was drunk. Then you didn't want him around after that unless you were prepared to suffer the consequences.

The writing style in this book could well be patronising, too, for all I know. He writes with the brogue in his pen:

yer man
after having seen the father
when I had taken the drink

Given that he left Ireland when he was less than 20 years old and he wrote this book around 50 years later, it smacks of the professional Irishman to write in the way that he has. I doubt that he talks like that any more. If he does, I apologise and say fair play to him!

The anecdotes that fill the 300 or so pages of this book are funny, interesting, shocking: all of these and they come across very well. However, my dislike of this man came when he wrote about his wife and children and how he hurt and maligned them as, like his father, he moved from social event to social event without so much as a thought of ever going home or helping out. Half way through the book I almost stopped reading it as I couldn't bring myself to keep the company of a man who behaved and thought the way he did.

His trips to India are a fascination, however! I won't ruin the plot by revealing why he went to India but if it's all true; and if he's told the story accurately, we have a right to be dumbfounded. McCourt drops names like confetti at a wedding: the people he met at bars and parties and in the street. He appeared on television, played rugby in the USA ... he's told a story of a rich, albeit debauched, life. He has not fulfilled the ambition that he sets out in his preface of SHOWING the people of Limerick anything other than that he has shamed himself.

Where does the tile A Monk Swimming come from? The title is taken from McCourt's mis hearing of the Hail Mary at some stage in his life: instead of hearing Hail Mary ... amongst women, he heard Hail Mary ... A Monk Swimming.

I bought this book in Limerick, by coincidence, for €4.99 when the published price was €19.18: so I feel happier about that than if I'd paid full price to this hoor!

 

© Duncan Williamson
4 February 2003