SOURCE: "Brother Also Rises from the Ashes," in Los Angeles Times, June 8, 1998, p. E4.

[In the following review, Reynolds addresses the tone of the biographical storytelling in A Monk Swimming.]

Angela 's Ashes got you down?

Here's the antidote [A Monk Swimming], written by Frank McCourt's black sheep of a little brother. Malachy—more a tsunami of entertaining, reckless verbiage than a book—the plot a wobbly line of stories drawn through a drunken haze of a life. About the only thing the McCourt brothers have in common is the most terrifying childhood on public record. Oprah wouldn't know how to begin with this one.

Malachy's cure is the hair of the dog. Nothing is taken seriously in his first three decades of life as he "quaffs," he "dips his wick," he blarneys his way—into parties, clubs, New York society, bartending jobs, beds all over town. If...