SOURCE: D'Aulaire, Emily. Review of Last Night's Fun, by Ciaran Carson. Smithsonian 29, no. 7 (October 1998): 36, 38.

In the following excerpt, D'Aulaire asserts that music is the unifying theme of Carson's Last Night's Fun, but that the book is really about much more.

Purportedly about Irish music, [Ciaran Carson's] Last Night's Fun is in fact about much more. Music is the instrument with which the author leads his reader through reminiscences that have as many twists and turns as the back alleys of his Belfast youth, and the book does include passages that require a musical background to fully understand and appreciate. But in the end, one need not know a dirge from a ditty to delight in Carson's descriptions of Wellington boots, schoolrooms, movies, smoking, eating, pubs, drinking (lots of drinking), etymology—and time.

Indeed, time is a recurring theme throughout Carson's book, though the reader is not always sure...