A Bestiary

Originally published as three separate volumesDonkeys Years Dog Days andThe Whole Hog<strong>A Bestiary</strong> relates the life and times of one of Irelandsgr... » 

Originally published as three separate volumesDonkeys Years Dog Days andThe Whole HogA Bestiary relates the life and times of one of Irelandsgreatest contemporary writers. As in his fiction Higginss writing exquisitelycaptures sights smells and emotions detailing his life from childhood inCounty Kildare before his familys economic decline to his mothers slowagonizing death from his travels in England and South Africa to his two yearsspent living with a schoolmistress after the end of his first marriage. Inwriting his memoirs Higgins exposes the sources for many of his best novelsfrom Scenes from a Receding Past to Langrishe Go Down giving the reader arare look into the story behind the story. But A Bestiary is more than afactual exposethis collection of memoirs is constructed in a novelistic waycreating a work of literary art out of a life. «