Meet Peig McManus, an unforgettable Dublin character whose life story will make you laugh and cry.
Her memoir of a 1940s' Dublin childhood is recounted with remarkable candour and wit, as she describes her early years in the last of the city's tenements, under the shadow of the Second World War.
As her family and community faced many challenges, they managed to laugh and sing even in the midst of great sorrow, before their way of life was shattered when the slums were cleared to make way for a new life for the people of the inner city.
Peig learned early about class distinction, chastity and shame, and fought against social prejudice to become one of Ireland's foremost campaigners for educational reform. But a quiet sorrow lay at the heart of her story, one which could not be hidden forever.
Now, in her eighties, Peig McManus recounts her journey to becoming herself, and her many falls from grace along the way. The story of an irrepressible nature and the triumphs of a girl who couldn't do what she was told, however hard she tried.
