Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?: A Memoir

"Séamas O’Reilly’s rousing grief memoir shuns sentimentality in favor of gallows humor. Its title comes from a favorite family tale: when O’Reilly was five, his mother died, leaving behind 11 (!) children. At the wake in their house in Northern Ireland, O’Reilly went around the crowd “like a chipper little maître’d, with the cheerful enquiry: ‘Did ye hear Mammy died?’” I laughed out loud reading this memoir – O’Reilly’s style and mining of family farce recall David Sedaris, but with a Derry bent."