Hugh Leonard's recollections of his Dublin childhood [in "Home Before Night"] are a charming and gritty advertisement for the past, without being quite the real thing….

Mr. Leonard is a playwright, and an appealing one. In the kind of fairly traditional theater he practices, the writer speaks indirectly, through his characters. The "I" in "Home Before Night" is, in theory, the author, but we do not feel that he is speaking directly to us. He could be a stage figure: a character created at a distance to relay what the author has to say. At times, in fact, Mr. Leonard writes of himself in the third person. Possibly the intention is to change perspective; in fact, it increases the distance.

It is as a dramatist that Mr. Leonard has done the spiritual work that makes a genuine memoir. "Da" presented a number of strongly delineated figures from the...