Down All the Days

It surprises me that, as difficult as communicating is for him, Christy Brown does not economise in his use of words. If you like beautiful language, that is, language used beautifully (though much of it is bawdy and crude), you may enjoy this book. I admire Brown's talent and his honesty, but be warned: Not everyone needs to read such a wordy book about endless poverty, obdurate immorality, and predictable violence, however well observed.

Christy Brown gives an intricately etched picture of the human spirit that cannot be beaten, smashed, drunk, drowned, maimed, or murdered out of defiant existence. The story is of a family living on the edge of absolute poverty in a Dublin slum, the tale of an unending stream of kids being born to a worn-ragged mother and an abusive, drunken father, through the eyes of a son made mute and unable to move on his own by an un-named crippling condition (cerebral palsy we are to assume, Brown's affliction). The tale is not a navel-gazing excercise in simpering self-pity and psychoanalytic blame-casting, as is the standard fare today, but a book that captures the shocking stupidity, humor, farcical violence, and unshakeable love of the family's existence, in detail unsurpassed by anthing else that I've read. And that's just one level of many by which one can enjoy this book