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A Song for Mary: An Irish-American Memory, by Dennis Smith
Ebook A Song for Mary: An Irish-American Memory, by Dennis Smith
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Growing up in the rough and tumble of New York City in the 1940s and 50s, Dennis Smith was dirt-poor, Irish Catholic and missing a father. Told in a first person narrative, this is a powerful odyssey of a young man coming of age in a confusing world.
- Sales Rank: #2757360 in Books
- Color: Black
- Published on: 2000-03-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.99" h x .86" w x 5.00" l, .92 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 384 pages
- ISBN13: 9780446675680
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
From Publishers Weekly
In an author's note, Smith, best known for Report from Engine Co. 82, states that this isn't a novel?although it reads like one. Smith grew up poor on Manhattan's East Side in the postwar years, in the Kips Bay neighborhood, where Italians were "guineas" and blacks "coloreds" and Sister Maureen's word was law. As the book opens, he is seven, living in a tenement with his mother, Mary, and his brother. They are on welfare. His mother moonlights as a charwoman while his father lies in a hospital, his legs useless after a mysterious accident. Smith is a gentle, religious boy who can be as obstinate as a terrier. Resentment and heartbreak surface when he learns that his father, whom he has never seen, isn't in the hospital after all but in a mental institution, and that this terrible secret?like that of being on welfare?must remain in the family. As he grows older, Smith starts smoking and drinking, drops out of high school, moves along to pot and then to heroin. A brush with the law lands him in the Air Force. After he leaves the service, he works as a cowboy in the West, but he is still drifting. He returns east, where his mother, toiling at the phone company, leads by example and he follows, into the FDNY, for which he puts out fires in a South Bronx teeming with poor people on welfare. Smith has come full circle and the irony is not lost on him. In this life-affirming reminiscence, the author thanks, through beautiful words, his mother for all her sacrifice, God for giving him a second chance and "a city that paid the rent and put an egg on the table for us when we needed it." BOMC alternate; Reader's Digest Condensed Book; Time Warner audio.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Smith came of age in a poor, fatherless Irish Catholic family living in the New York tenements of East 56th Street. Readers will have a hard time putting down this tribute to his mother, Mary. We travel with young Dennis from his first experiences in Catholic school, cleaning erasers and feeling the unjust whacks of disciplinary rulers, to the frightening escapades of the teenage dropout who takes up with bad company. On the verge of felony, Smith joins the Air Force and then works as a cowboy before returning to New York. Unlike Malachy McCourt (A Monk Swimming, LJ 4/1/98), Smith doesn't revel in his misdeeds but always hears his mother's voice in the back of his mind. He finds his way into a profession to which he can give his all, serving as a New York fireman; he is the author of nine other works, many of them about firefighting, including Report from Engine Co. 82 (LJ 2/1/72). Highly recommended.?Nancy Shires, East Carolina Univ., Greenville, NC
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Smith knows memoirs: his Report from Engine Co. 82 (1972, 1991) has sold more than two million copies. So readers will expect good things from his reflections on his pre-firefighting years on the tough streets of New York. The memoir is a paean to Smith's mother, Mary, who raised sons Billy and Dennis on welfare and occasional housecleaning and ironing jobs and, later, on a job with the telephone company because the boys' father had been hospitalized. (The boys couldn't visit him, and the reason for his dad's hospitalization was a central mystery of young Dennis' life.) The Smiths lived in inexpensive apartments on the East Side of midtown Manhattan, went to Catholic schools, and got into trouble with neighborhood kids whose families were almost as poor as they. Smith brings to life that distant, immigrant community, describing family, school, church, and streets as they were perceived by the child he was, from age seven to his arrival at Engine Co. 82 in 1965. Involving and vivid. Mary Carroll
Most helpful customer reviews
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
A poignant tale of a young Irish-American Boy .
By A Customer
This book by Dennis Smith is a fine prequel to his Engine Co. 82. In 82 we saw a young man dealing with the job he has chosen for himself, and a difficult job that was. In Song for Mary we see the boy who became that man. The only way a man could become a fireman is if he had great compassion for humanity. Mary, his mother, gave him this compassion. The "Song" of the title resonates throughout the book with the haunting refrain of The Rose of Tralee. I thought this memoir was as good, if not better, than those of Frank McCourt and others which have filled the bookshops recently. A MUST-READ for anyone who cherishes their Irish-American heritage or if they came of age in New York City,
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book from beginning to end.
By A Customer
To me, "A Song for Mary" very dramatically tells the story of how hard it was for many Irish and Italian families living in the East 50's of New York City during the 1950's. When you first meet Mary, on the 2nd page of the book, you immediately realize that her life and the way she raised her two sons, is worth reading about. She never had it easy, but she worked hard and had great comfort, finally, through her sons. I know, because she was my mother-in-law. I know too that Dennis, my husband's brother, has given an accurate protrayal of the neighborhood, and the way people talked, acted, and lived their lives, for we have received man letters of congratulations from neighborhood people. The Washington Post said that no one has ever writted a better book about mothers, and I am certain they were able to say that only because they believed in the book's honesty. The story is told in the voice of a seven year old, when Dennis was seven, and the voice changes in small degrees as Dennis gets older, through the tough, brutal language of a street teen to the reserved, introspective voice of the young adult. It is a book that stays interesting and exciting from beginning to end. I may be prejudiced, but I still know how to evaluate a book, and "A Song for Mary" is a good read.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
An American "Angela's Ashes"
By John Kwok
Dennis Smith's "A Song for Mary" is a powerful, emotionally gripping memoir that is one of the finest published in recent years. Along with Pete Hamill's "A Drinking Life", and Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes", it belongs in the first rank of great memoirs written by Irish-American authors. Speaking of Hamill, it is a Manhattan version of "A Drinking Life", replete with the chaos and woe associated with growing up poor and Irish in New York City. Smith's vivid prose conjurs up the Irish-American neighobrhood that was once the East Side of Midtown Manhattan. We see a young, bright Dennis Smith almost drawn into a life of petty crime, yet saved by love and devotion from his mother and local Catholic priests. Eventually the book ends positively, with his arrival as the rookie fireman at Engine Company 82, setting the stage for the events he described two decades ago in his bestselling memoir "Report from Engine Company 82". I am surprised that this fine book hasn't earned the wide audience it deserves. Anyone who has fallen in love with Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes" should also fall in love with Dennis Smith's "A Song for Mary".
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