Rating: 
Summary: Credit Deserved For What It Is...NOT Another ASHES
Review: While many have made the mistake of comparing Malachy McCourt's adult memoir, A MONK SWIMMING, to his brother Frank's more tragic childhood recount in the Pulitzer Prize-winning ANGELA'S ASHES, I preferred reading the book on a completely separate level. As this younger brother's memoir is in a sense a continuation of the McCourt saga, which picks up from a different perspective on the hopeful ending of ASHES, it is a story of a different time, place and person, bereft of most of the second-hand misery that accompanied the 362 pages of Frank's heart-wrentching tale. The character worries of ANGELA'S ASHES included surviving famine, tuburculosis and the general abominations of poverty. A MONK SWIMMING grapples mainly with the issues of managing an acting sometime career, excessive pubbing and sordid sexual conquests and the more literarily comical debacles derived from such. Lacking the degree of drama, this book has perhaps been thought of as a disappointment in the wake of its seeming predecessor. Yet judged on its own merits and intentions, A MONK SWIMMING is a terrific piece altogether, told with all the heart and lilt that apparently runs strong in the McCourt clan. Malachy chronicles the charming, wily escapades of an unapologetic drunk--himself--in this, a story about an Irish immigrant living (and occasionally thriving) in America. His wit and style are a wonderful amalgam of Irish irony and lyricism with New York abrasiveness and sophistication. There IS a tragic element to this narrative, however, in that Malachy proves to be much like his wretch of a father (for whom he was conveniently named), a man who oftentimes put the bottle before the family. In that there is a contrite quality to his descriptions of certain events, such as losing his first wife and not being allowed to see his children for a time. This adds reality and cynicism to an otherwise humorous bio that appears as the anecdotes progress through Malachy's evolvement as, dare I say, more American than Irish. A MONK SWIMMING ought to be viewed and enjoyed for what it is: a genuine, tipsy romp, as clever and raucous as its author. It is not another ANGELA'S ASHES nor, rest assured, was it ever purported to be.
Rating: 
Summary: So much talent...wasted!!
Review: Reading this book all I could think was...so much wasted talent. This book is clearly written by a man who is more in love with himself than any other human in the world. To add to this, he clearly has talents that could have taken him far but instead he boasts about all of his sexual conquests, his drunken escapades, and lack of maintaining worthy employment. Surely this shows the immaturity of Mr. McCourt. The one senerio that played over & over in this book was the abandonment by his father at an early age. McCourt tried to pull at your heartstrings about being a child without a responsible father when in reality he did the same thing to his wife & children. This book is not worth the paper it was written on and I regret wasting my time & money.
Rating:
Summary: Laughing all the way to the bank
Review: Talk about brand extension! If you weren't cynical about publishers before, you will be now. McCourt can't write. The book collapses after the first chapter. The space devoted to his gold-smuggling career is repetitious filler, not funny the first time around. Who edited this mess? The problem with the book is not that McCourt was a womanizing drunk: it's that he can't make the life of a womanizing drunk sound funny or interesting.
Rating:
Summary: A Dog of a book
Review: Readers expecting a reprise of brother Frank McCourt's book will be very dissappointed. I sure was. I'm pretty compulsive about finishing books once I've started, but if I'd had another book to start I wouldn't have bothered with this one. Malachy McCourt tells of many a drunk, which are semi-credible, and many a bedding, which are not. He drops names frequently, but tells us nothing of value about anyone. A total waste of time.
Rating:
Summary: A Monk Sucking
Review: It's a story filled with dichotomies. Malachy continually lauds himself for standing up for the downtrodden yet casually refers to women as "fleshpots". He villifies his father by calling him irresponsible, oversexed, drunk. This self-pitying fool seems to be unaware that his actions prove that he is no better, and possibly even worse, than his father. In the back of the book it says that he is happily married. I kept waiting to hear about the love of his life. Instead you'll hear him glorify the mire of his former life. I so desperately wanted to like this book but I found myself doing just the opposite.
Rating: 
Summary: This is a good companion piece to "Angela's Ashes."
Review: Although it would not stand very well on its own as a memoir(it covers too short a period in his life), "A Monk Swimming" is a valuable companion piece to "Angela's Ashes." It's interesting to see Frank and the other brothers, Angela and Malachy, Sr. from Malachy's perspective; likewise, it's interesting to see what the child Malachy of "Angela's Ashes" grew up to become. To fully view a piece of sculpture, you have to walk around it and view it from all sides: Malachy McCourt's book provides another angle to the McCourt family and shows how the same circumstances provoke quite different reactions in a different personality.
Rating:
Summary: I should have stopped with his brother's book!
Review: Perhaps my expectations were too high after reading "Angela's Ashes". Fifty pages into "A Monk Swimming", I realized I should not have bought it. After 100 pages, I stopped reading it. Malachy's story is a drunken braggard's tale of shameless debauchery. I found it had no literary value and I would not recommend this book to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: Save your money!
Review: It's unfortunate that 0 stars is not part of the rating system. Unfortunately I did not read a review of this book prior to shelling out my $20+ and I sooo wish that I had. I absolutely loved Angela's Ashes and was hoping that this book could, in some way, capture the mood, tone, humor and excellence presented by his brother Frank. Instead we got the rantings of a guy so selfish and self-centered that I wondered why his brother did anything to help him leave Ireland at all. The guy spends all his time drinking, fighting and sleeping with women not his wife, yet goes crazy when he gets it into his head that she, perhaps, is engaged in an affair. In his account of what he did next he seems to be so terribly proud of the way he outwitted the maid so he could go in and terrorize her and ransack the apartment. I finished the book, even though I really wanted to just throw it out, because I kept hoping it would get better, that eventually there would be some redemption o! n his part. If it ever happened, it occurred AFTER the events portrayed in this book. What an absolute waste of my time!
Rating: 
Summary: A Monk Swimming......gratuitous and contrived.
Review: A Monk Swimming by Malachy McCourt is a painful read. Whereas we are all used to sequels to virtually every successful publication, the author is shirt-tailing on his brother's work "Angela's Ashes". It seems brother Frank got the better draw from the gene pool in the writing department, to misquote some of Malachy's contrived cuteness. The book covers the period from Malachy's arrival in the USA to his not-so-hilarious gold smuggling adventures. We are treated to a poor man's Iron John routine regarding the failure of his marriage, and his efforts to portray himself as a type of devil-may-care Renaissance man ring hollow. However, the most aggravating thing about this book is McCourt's stage-Irish use of language. One gets the impression that entire sections are written so McCourt can gratuitously throw in another phrase or two he considers humorous. Unfortunately, the overall impression left is that Malachy considers himself hilarious, and any discerning! reader should find him so too. I'll misquote Malachy again in closing........."There is a gobshite born every minute". True, one wrote the book, and the rest will probably buy it.
Rating:
Summary: Very dissapointing
Review: Enjoyed Angela's Ashes and had hoped that Malachy had some of the talent for writing that his brother Frank showed. However, it would seem Malachy's talents are all inherited from what we have read of his father - he is a drunkard, womanizer and has no education. He even brags that his brother is the only Teacher in the US without a High School diploma. If that is indeed so, it certainly does not show in Frank's writing, but is typical of the sort of down play Malachy makes of all his characters. He appears as a thoroughly dispicable character and his book is not worth the time to plough through!
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