Growing Up So High: A Liberties Boyhood - Softcover

"Open any page at random of Sean O'Connor's "Growing Up So High" and you are instantly swept up in a swirling cornucopia of the sounds, sights and sensations of a Dublin childhood, rendered as fresh now as when first experienced by the wide-eyed boy who drank in every experience decades ago. This is a memoir for any lover of Dublin to test their mettle and memories against: an account of an impressionable, mischievous and inquisitive child growing up in a large extended family within the Liberties of Dublin, whose teeming laneways and close-knit community acted like a second extended family, forever expanding his knowledge about future mysteries of adulthood and past stories of previous lives lived on those streets. It is a love poem to family members, neighbours and friends who turned that innocent boy into the man he is today, all vividly brought back to life within the pages of this vibrant memoir of a vanished Dublin." --Dermot Bolger

Sean O'Connor was born in Francis Street, in the Liberties of Dublin, a neighbourhood famous over the centuries for the sturdy independence of its people. Now, in this evocative and affectionate book, he recollects the unique and colourful district of his childhood: the neighbours who lived there, their traditions, talk and lore, the music and poetry of the laneways and markets. Remembrances of the 1940s classroom, of bird-watching in Phoenix Park, of roaming towards adolescence in the streets of his ancestors are mingled with tales of ancient ghosts and the coming of change to the Liberties. O'Connor, father of the novelist Joseph, tells his story with honesty, warmth and style, and the often wry wit of his home-place. This tenderly written testament of one Liberties boy builds into a vivid and heart-warming picture of his own extended family as part of a proud community and its all-but-vanished way of life.