Written by a cerebral palsied man with severe speech and physical handicaps, the fictional account reveals the poverty, attitudes, cultural mores, and problems of a large working class family in Dublin. The narrator of the autobiographically-based novel is cerebral palsied although the handicap is only treated incidentally throughout the book. The primary focus of the text revolves around the narrator's descriptive perceptions of the people and conditions surrounding him as he views such aspects as his father's brutality, the defeating burdens of poverty and ignorance, the emotional chaos and crowded conditions of a continually-expanding family, and the customs and language characteristics of the Irish culture. (RD)