All Of Us There: (Virago Modern Classics)

'Touching and nostalgic' GUARDIAN 'She conjures places as vividly as feelings, and feelings as exactly as her surroundings' VOGUE 'It is the only intimate and un-angry expression of the feelings of a colonised people that I have ever read' DAVID THOMSON Polly Devlin grew up in County Tyrone, on the shores of Lough Neagh in the fifties, but it might as well have been another time and place altogether. In this memoir, she describes in witty, spontaneous and idiosyncratic prose her life as one of seven siblings in a Catholic family in Northern Ireland. 'A brooding, evocative study of Irish childhood, of the strong bonds of love and jealousy that sisters especially feel, the guilt-ridden pressures of religion, the magical countryside, the eccentric villagers. A hauntingly lovely work . . . beautifully written with poetic intensity which seems to encapsulate the Irish character with all its wit and bitterness and gift for words' HOMES AND GARDENS

About the Author :
Polly Devlin is a writer, broadcaster and filmmaker. She holds an OBE for services to literature. After spending her childhood in Northern Ireland, at the age of twenty-two she took up her first job - as a writer, and soon a features editor for British Vogue in London. A couple of years later, she moved to New York to work on American Vogue - where, once more, she was very much part of the scene she wrote about in her newspaper column and articles including for The Sunday Times, New Statesman and Observer. Her first book, All of Us There is a Virago Modern Classic. She divides her time between London and New York where until her recent retirement, she taught Creative Non-Fiction at Barnard College, Columbia University. She has also been a judge for various awards which include the Booker Prize (1984), Irish Times Literary Award (1994) and Pushkin Prize (1998).

Review :
She conjures places as vividly as feelings, and feelings as exactly as her surroundings. She reinvents the past with the aid of photographic prose, an album not only for herself and her sisters in Ireland, but full of pictures many who read this book will recognise - VOGUE Touching and nostalgic - GUARDIAN It is the only intimate and un-angry expression of the feelings of a colonised people that I have ever read - David Thomson This many-layered reminiscence glints across the indifferent, mysterious, yet comfortable countryside, classrooms fraught with the usual student shenanigans and insecurities and the intensity of Devlin's close relationship with her five sisters. - IRISH TIMES