Only Child

by Frank O'Connor

Book Overview

The story of Frank O'Connor is that of a shy child from a Cork slum who becomes aware that there is something beyond the confines of his life and the lives around him, something grander. And with... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394439333
• ISBN13: 9780394439334
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: Random House
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Thank god someone reissued this book

O'Connor is rightly famous mostly for his short stories, but his criticism - both The Lonely Voice and A Mirror In the Roadway - along with this volume of his memoirs, well, they're all just really good. I found this book in a library many years ago and there are a hundred scenes that still spring instantly to life, and sentences that are always going to be part of how I look at the world. He betrays his greatest talent in the fact that the book reads like a collection of wonderful chapters rather than a coherent whole, but each is filled with the spirit of a generous, funny, humane man, one of those rare authors that you wish you could hang out with. The people that assure that books keep getting read seem to be forgetting about O'Connor a little, but the pages they keep alive rarely seem to stay in the blood and brain like his do.