SOURCE: A review of A Monk Swimming, in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 245, No. 12, March 23, 1998, p. 83.

[The following review highlights the biographical progression in A Monk Swimming.]

In Angela's Ashes, the author's older brother Frank McCourt recounted the misery and heartbreak of growing up in Limerick, Ireland, in the 1930s and '40s. Now it's Malachy's turn [in A Monk Swimming] to tell the story of his own immigration to New York City in 1952 and how he started on his American dream by working on the docks. Before long his dire need to quench his thespian thirst takes him to the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where he finds "there is no difference between the rich and the poor, except poverty." Soon he's acting in plays, appearing on the Jack Paar Show and becoming a partner in a saloon called, of course, Malachy's. He hooks up with a "Jewish Presbyterian...