Jess and Nancy, nursing in France during the Great War, are very different girls with much in common. Both have lost their lovers in the trenches, so when the war is over, they return to a bleak future, nursing in Liverpool. Very soon, however, their paths diverge. Nancy marries an Australian and goes to live in the Outback whilst Jess marries a Liverpudlian. Both have children; Nancy's eldest is...
"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and...