SOURCE: "Upfront: Advance Reviews," in Booklist, March 1, 1998, p. 1043.

[The following review provides a sketch of the contents of A Monk Swimming.]

Coat-tailing the success of brother and performance partner Frank McCourt, author of Angela's Ashes (1996), Malachy [McCourt] weighs in with his own memoir, recounting his raucous early days in the U.S. Picking up after the childhood so vividly described in Angela's Ashes, A Monk Swimming (a mishearing of the Hail Mary phrase "Blessed art thou amongst women") recounts the unlikely tales of Malachy's serendipitous success as an actor and a bar owner after arriving in New York penniless and uneducated. Amidst tales of his drinking and general carousing with the likes of Peter O'Toole, Richard Burton, Jack Paar, and Robert Mitchum, Malachy also tells of his unexpected meeting with the queen of England, rooming with a psychotic socialite, and disastrous first marriage and inability to accept its...