This book is junk. How dare Frank McCourt's brother sponge off Frank like this! I couldn't get past the first few pages, it was so bad. I wasn't expecting an Angela's Ashes; I would have settled for a little bit of honesty from the author! Is that too much to ask? I quickly got tired of the author telling of his exuberant, extraverted adventures as a boy, then having either the audacity or the blindness to claim a page later how he was just this "shy" little creature. Malachey couldn't be shy if his life depended on it! What a bunch of mularkey. This whole book was a scam. Don't waste your money. What little I read was terribly poor writing. This man had no business entering the field of writing, he is an actor and bartender who has obviously spent very little time honing any sort of craft, he is simply a remora fish eating the crumbs off the tailfin of his brother.And the countless, shameless name-dropping! Who cares! This was a fiasco.