East Belfast in the 1940s and 1950s was an unlikely place to find a family of Irish-speakers, but bilingual-from-birth Áine Morton was oblivious. Her concerns were learning to dance, saving souls from purgatory, fighting with her hair and taking care of an escapologist guide dog.
In this gentle and nostalgic memoir, the Morton family experience evacuation to Donegal. confront their father’s impending blindness, sweep the boards at the Belfast Féis and try to keep up with their much holier – and much wealthier – Tyrone cousins.
As a slice of Irish life before the troubled years, it is flawless.* Áine Downey was born in Fintown, County Donegal in 1942 and brought up in Belfast, the youngest child of an Irish-speaking family, before moving to Derry in the 1960s. She was completing this new edition of her memoir at the time of her death in May 2020.
