Ireland: Life in Kilrush

What makes Life in Kilrush so appealing is that it is not just the account of one man's journey back to his childhood, but it is an exploration of a unique and quaint town and its distinctive inhabitants, in an era that we often wish we could return to; a more honest and straightforward time. One would almost mistake it for a simpler time, but this story defies that simplification. Joe Riley's memoir resonates with many of us who wish we could understand what events and people in our life shaped us and affected our emotional life.English born Joe Riley recounts his extraordinary childhood in a small town on the rugged West coast of Ireland, where he was abandoned by his abusive father at the age of four and raised by a loving older couple and their children.Emotionally unsettled for most of Joe Riley's adulthood, Joe feels inspired to revisit his childhood and write a memoir "Life in Kilrush... give the family immortality and ...somewhere in this process ...just might find himself along the way."One day Auntie May and the family discovers the welts and bruises on Joe's back ("oh you poor crater") the situation became permanent. On the rare occasions his father tried to reconnect, Auntie May made sure Joe was "too sick" to comply. The attempts soon stopped altogether.Thus begins Joe's extraordinary transition from a young Protestant English boy with a "Geordie" accent into the unofficially adopted member of this loving Irish Catholic family, the Deloughery's. Thus begins Joe's journey as a member of the Deloughery family, and the introduction to a cast of characters and experiences unique to Ireland's west coast. Ireland's emergence as independent nation, combined with the end of WW II, finds in Kilrush, an inviting and vibrant place with a genuine personality of its own.I was an English boy and a protestant in a small catholic town out on the west coast of Ireland. As you can imagine this young English lad was not about to have an easy time because of the memories of English atrocities by the British Army of Black and Tans.Joe begins his education at the Christian Brothers School and soon finds himself an unexpected outcast. With his "Geordie" English accent and the fact he's the only Protestant in this overwhelmingly Catholic environment, Joe learns quickly to fight and defend himself from his bullying schoolmates. Unfortunately, he has little defense against the renowned physical abuse of the Brothers and he suffers the worst beatings with the black