Stay connected with eNews!

Remembering Peter Hamill

by Sharon Bruni, Public Services Librarian 

I have always loved stories of the immigrant experience, in particular ones in which the narrator provides for us the keen insight of the experience lived in childhood. Peter Hamill’s memoir A Drinking Life has always been one of my favorites, and certainly one of the best memoir’s I have ever read. Peter Hamill was the first-born son of Irish Republican immigrants from Belfast. He was raised in an apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn by a loving mother and absentee father, for whom “part of being a man was to drink.” Peter Hammil’s ability to describe the memories of his childhood full of both beauty and pain are equivalent to Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Frank McCourt’s, Angela’s Ashes. In fact, it was after reading A Drinking Life that McCourt was inspired to write Angela’s Ashes. If you have not read this classic memoir, I recommend reading it this month in honor of this great writer’s life. Thank you, Elizabeth Krebs for putting together this reading list for us.  

Having trouble viewing this email? View it in your web browser