This exuberant, touching memoir opens on St Patrick’s Day, 1936, with America in the throes of the Great Depression. The six-year-old author, accompanied by his younger sister Anne-Marie and their spirited but vulnerable mother, has just arrived on the porch of their new home in Albany, where his feckless, often absent father has promised a brave new life will begin. But the father never shows up, and the family are thrown back once again on their own resources.

For the next 8 years, through the end of the Great Depression and into World War Two, they live in the heart of the Irish slum, surrounded by ward heelers, unemployment and grinding poverty, as well as the eccentric ‘crazyladies’ of the title.

Told from the point of view of the author’s younger self, with honesty, candour and a fascinating eye for period detail, Crazyladies offers a marvellous portrait of a child forced to grow up too fast. A funny, deeply moving memoir, which also paints a vivid portrait of a neighbourhood, a city and a whole nation of people waiting for a better life to come.