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All Souls: A Family Story from Southie by
Michael Patrick Macdonald
(Review: September 2005) Michael Patrick Macdonald’s autobiographical tale
of growing up in the Irish projects of Boston is vivid and harrowing as it
spans the city’s busing and segregation crisis in the 70s and mob violence
(the infamous Whitey Bulger) and the code-of-silence (unsolved murders where
witnesses on the scene don’t talk) in the 80s and 90s. As one of the younger
Macdonalds (ten in all), the author takes a reporterly approach as he
recounts his older siblings fall to drugs, crime and payback violence, and
later, a younger brother is brought up on murder charges. Through it all
Macdonald the person is absent. He never jumps into the fray, never gets into
trouble and never goes on dates or expresses an interest in love,
relationships or women. At the epicenter of the book is Ma. She looms large
through out as a heavy drinking caretaker who ostensibly complied with the
Catholic tenet of no birth control, yet still managed to have a several
children out of wedlock. It’s an unsettling yet understandable hypocrisy
that’s never explored—and that’s just one of many unsatisfying loose ends
(like his older brother Frankie, constantly portrayed as a clean-nosed boxer,
who winds up catching a bullet during a robbery; the transition to crime is
stark, sudden and never explained). And while it’s understandable why
Macdonald would want to put forth a polished image of his mother, siblings
and the place he grew up, the yarn smacks of selective story telling. At
the onset Macdonald lays the premise that his book will wake people up to what
is going on in Southie (“No one knew what was going on in Southie.”), but
when the All Souls was published in 1999, most of Macdonald’s
revelations had long since found their way onto the front page of The
Boston Globe with the flight of Whitey Bulger, the cracking of the
code-of-silence in Charlestown and gentrification of Southie. Had the book
hit five years earlier, it would have been brave, bold and sobering (plus
this is the projects we’re talking about, a veritable breeding ground for
crime and poverty be it Southie, Watts, South Central, Bridgeport, or
Brooklyn). Nonetheless, All Souls is told from the heart, well
written (easy to consume) and a compelling example of picking yourself up by
the bootstraps and making something of yourself. All Souls was a
selection for my book club. The group was torn, many found it challenging,
gritty and real, other thought it was a means to enshrine his family in a
positive light. The other common point was that Macdonald was/is gay and thus
just stayed away from detail of his personal life. The only time he discusses
gay men is when Ma volunteers at an AIDS clinic. - TBM |
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