This memoir of rural Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s comprises a series of stories that give an insight into a way of life now gone. The recall is rose-tinted at times, but harsh realities are not ignored in this enjoyable read. "The world they lived in was a small place of a few miles", but the experiences relayed are universal: family and community relations, the clash between old and new, the influence of religion and superstition and so on. The Clocking Hen tells of a family divided over money (land was the other great cause of division in the rural Ireland of the time) and reveals the futility of all such divisions. Rosary Time tells how an aunt cleverly used the rosary to get rid of a freeloading Protestant neighbour who continuously called to her house expecting to be fed. In The Tractor Versus the Horse we see the narrator's father was a traditionalist who preferred to use horses rather than tractors. The uncle and cousins jeered the family as "Amish" farmers but got their comeuppance when the tractor got stuck in a bog and the horse had to pull it out.
