Seán Dunne’s mother died at the age of thirty-three, when he was four years old. In My Father’s House, his account of the trials and tests of a childhood in Waterford in the 1960s, touched a communal heart when it was published in 1991, and became a bestseller.
This eloquent testimony to one fractured family’s capacity to prevail, including the heroic roles enacted by Seán’s father, Richie, and their housekeeper, Tessie, unfolds with an understated dignity. Acute loss and vivid recall yield wry and poignant truths.
Seán Dunne’s disarmingly simply prose scrutinizes social history in an Irish housing-estate, with its stories of tragedy and resilience, through the lens of personal experience. Told with honesty, humour and love, it endures also as the record of a spiritual odyssey and growth.
