National Network for Equitable Library Service

There have been other descriptions and narratives of Dublin tenement life but the originality of this account of an Irish childhood, of hardship and joy, poverty, pleasure, humour and over all humanity is unique. Lily O'Shea is the child of a mixed marriage, baptised as a Protestant but living in a Catholic community in Dublin in the 1930s and 1940s. Always conscious of her status as an outsider, Lily O'Shea at first does not seem to understand why she is treated differently. She yearns to be the same as the other children, to have the holy pictures and statues, alter lamps and a holy water font; to wear a lovely white dress. Lily O'Connor grew up in Ireland before moving to England and ultimately settling on he coast in Australia