A memoir like no other, A Single Headstrong Heart passionately and
intelligently reveals both the era and the individual. Funny, quirky and
touching, this latest offering from Kevin Myers describes in a
first-person narrative his childhood up to the early years of his career
as a journalist and his departure from University College Dublin in the
late 1960s. Related with a Rabelaisian verve, A Single Headstrong Heart
is a prequel to Myers' bestselling Watching the Door, set in Belfast at
the height of the Troubles during the 1970s, and it has all the panache
and particularity of that masterly book. As they grow up in
Leicestershire, England, with regular holiday visits to Ireland, Kevin
and his twin sister Maggie are sheltered by a mother's domestic
diligence and survive a father's eccentricity and gradual
disintegration. Being Irish and Catholic in an English provincial town
brings fascinating tensions and analysis to bear on boarding school
experiences, social status, sport and a burgeoning sexuality. The
travails of puberty have rarely been so candidly depicted. Pop music,
political awareness and modernity break in with the advent of the
Sixties and modernity as this rare, ebullient personality undergoes
social and political transformation. With a sometimes grotesque humour
reminiscent of Roald Dahl, these recollections retain an authentic
childlike sense of galloping self-importance in an adult re-casting.
Broadly chronological, the main narrative arc is sustained by the
author's relationship with his father, with a startling denouement
revealed after his father's death that lends context to these vivid
memories.
