The Hard Life: An Exegesis of Squalor

A "wild, hilarious, fast moving, irreverent and comic" novel of growing up in turn-of-the-century Dublin from the acclaimed Irish author (New York Herald Tribune).

When Finbarr's mother dies, he and his older brother Manus are sent to their half-uncle's house in Dublin. There, he is introduced to school—and the leather strap—at a benevolent Christian Brothers establishment. Evenings are spent listening to his uncle's whisky-fueled discussions with a Jesuit priest, arguing the finer points o...