My Father Left Me Ireland
By Michael Brendan Dougherty
Sentinel, 240pp, £20/$24
"You leave. I cry.” With these four words, Michael Brendan Dougherty sums up for his father their relationship as he perceived it while growing up. Dougherty was raised by his Irish-American mother in New Jersey. His father was far away in Dublin, a very occasional visitor to American shores. His parents met in London, but had already broken up by the time Michael was born.
Dougherty finds himself inhabiting an “architecture of fatherlessness” in the American suburbs. There was no stigma – at least officially. In fact, he grew up in an atmosphere where there was nothing that he and his peers were obliged to believe. He was raised in a way that “seemed calibrated to make an ex-Catholic”.
