Rating: 
Summary: Interesting and Enjoyable
Review: Anyone who has ever heard the recording of "Peter Kagen and The Wind" which Mr. Clancy recorded with Tommy Makem, or heard Mr. Clancy present the poem "Pegasus" knows his unusual ability to involve the listener in the story of a song, or in poetry written by others. For many performers that would be enough. With this book Mr. Clancy proves his abilities extend beyond that. His special way of presenting the series of stories incorporated in this book makes reading a different experience - one has only to open one's thinking, and allow the gentle energy of the unfolding stories to keep the course as he leads the reader through Ireland of the 30's, 40's and 50's. The style makes for easy reading - almost as though someone were there reading it to you. He incorporates much Irish history in some of these stories, yet there is nothing dry about history with this style of presentation. A story from his childhood or youth is being told, then, to establish for the reader a larger grasp of understanding, he slightly opens for the reader a door to a more distant past - perhaps a few hundred years. Stories of experiences. Stories of family. Stories of friends.
Then come the adventures in the United States.
At rare times exposed to wealth extreme. At other times exposure to the other extreme of the financial spectrum.
There are stories of the 60's Greenwich Village. The characters who became friends. Friends, many of whom later came to be regarded as icons of the time. We are led through striving of work to provide sustenance; the fun of the singing get-togethers; the evolving of what would become, with his brothers Paddy and Tom, and Tommy Makem, a group well known in many parts of the world.
This is a book written in a style simple enough to include the depth presented. It is the autobiography of the early years of a man. It is the work of a poet.
It is the first book in a long time I have felt I wanted to buy as gifts for friends to assure they have the opportunity to experience what it offers.
It is a book for those curious about the 60's Greenwich Village scene. It is a book for those interested in Irish history. It is a book for those interested in music. It is a book for "Folkies." It is a book for those interested in human nature and interaction. It is a book about a boy developing, finding out who he is on his way to becoming a man. It is a wonderful trip Mr. Clancy has allowed us to share.
Rating:
Summary: An amazing story told with painful yet refreshing honesty.
Review: Devotees of the Clancy Brothers music may be in for a bit of a disappointment if they are expecting a neat and tidy, A to Z chronology of Liam's life. For this account is not a "poor Irish kid rises to the top" story, but rather an amazingly descriptive
account of Liam's nervous childhood, his less than devoted parenting and the countless faces who influenced him as he struggled in a foreign land.As one breezes through the easy to follow passages, it becomes clear the author has set out not to impress the reader, although that wouldn't be hard for Clancy to do, but rather to give and gain perspective about life, love and the music which we all love. I highly recommend this book to anyone......
Rating:
Summary: The Mountain of The Women
Review: Forget about "Angela's Ashes". If you want to know about growing up in Ireland in the 30's and 40's read this book! If you want to experience the Mystical and the Lyrical of Ireland ... If you want learn about,or re-live,America of the 50's and 60's ... read this book! Liam Clancy writes from the heart. He writes with humor when
appropriate and is serious and deep when required. If you want to truly experience Mr. Clancy's story get the CD, too. The book and the CD complement and enrich each other, while Liam's voice along with his acting ability add a dimension that a book simply cannot convey.
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written and wonderfully spoken
Review: I just finished listening to the audio version of "The Mountain of the Women". It is beautifully written and the music of Liam's voice and the feeling that he brings to recounting his memories of personal, cultural and professional devlopment provides a spell-binding experience. I have been a devotee of Liam's music for many years. I was often at The White Horse back in the 60's when Liam, his brothers and Tommy Maken would hold forth with song and story. This work opens up an entirely new understanding of his background, his upbringing and the forces that shaped his life and career. It is a treat to experience an Irishman's moving memoir that depicts a life that was not founded on drink and poverty, but on culture, beauty and a passion for his profession.
Rating: 
Summary: Surprising.
Review: I'd expected a bawdy tale of groupies, instead this is a lyrical autobiography. It takes a while to establish the cadence but once established, the melody is by turns robust & romantic. There are some wonderful riffs on modern Irish consciousness - new chords based on traditional music. Liam Clancy displays virtuoso skill as an interpreter of how quickly the world shrank during the 20th century.
Rating:
Summary: A Gift in Words From A Living Legend
Review: If you are a fan of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, then this book is something you probably can't wait to read. If you are a poor soul who has never sat down and listened to "Live at Carnegie Hall"...well you'd better get busy. You have a lot of reading and listening to do, and I envy you for it. This book is simply beautiful to read. Mr. Clancy has the Irish way with words in the truest sense, and its a wonder he waited so long to begin a literary career (I always enjoyed his liner notes!) The story of his life and career is well worth reading to fans of his music and to fans of good memoir writing as well. Read this book and you will feel as though Mr. Clancy is speaking only to you. He evokes memories of family, home, and childhood with amazing grace and ease. In addition, be sure to get the reissue of his solo album "Liam Clancy" which is availble from this site. God bless the Clancy Brothers!
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Summary: AN IRISH MEMOIR WORTH READING !
Review: Liam Clancy is an Irishman that is talented in the arts like so many of the Irish. His story starts as a young man in Ireland and stays in that country 'til he is an adult and then takes place in the USA, but always returns to his birthplace. His trials are many and it is really interesting to learn of his ups and downs and how his life straightens out without any particular planning on his part. Success just happens and thank goodness it does. A grand read and well worth your while.
Rating:
Summary: A Long Way from Tipperary
Review: Liam Clancy portrays a poignant, honest, and sometimes irreverent portrait of the life of a young man growing up in the Ireland of the 40s and 50s. His prose is as lyrical as his music, sprinkled with laughter and pathos. I read, and understood his struggle living in a country of which he said had one foot in the twentieth century and the other in the Middle Ages. From provincial Ireland to the fast pace of New York's Greenwich Village in an era of coffee houses, folk singers, booze and (Playboy) bunnies, the multi-talented Liam Clancy comes out a survivor, unapologetic and charming. My only problem with this book is that it ended too soon. Will we be treated to a sequel, Mr. Clancy?
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Summary: There's no raconteur like an Irish raconteur...
Review: Life experience, not so much reconstructed as double-distilled, is recaptured in the telling of Liam Clancy's thrilling and insightful memoir. Here's his hometown, Carrick-on-Suir, an almost mythically Irish hometown in the backwaters of the Emerald Isle. Where careeneth a procession of townsfolk both dotty and dour: Here's the town publican. There goes a creepy-looking cluster of nuns. Hark the churchbell, tolling out the Angelus, and oh, have a heartbreaking serving of tragedy along with your tea. Most important of all, observe the morally upright Mammy Clancy in action, pinning her hopes on her eleventh child: surely this shy impressionable son is a priest in the making. The author's eye fondly revisits family life in loving but not uncritical retrospect, the idealized Irish family, thrown headlong into life's tough struggles. An idyllic setting, interrupted one day by the arrival of one world-weary American heiress with a hidden agenda. She's determined to travel the world collecting folk music with the young Liam as her assistant. But can it be, she wants to snag him and possess him as her own--much as Dido, the evil queen of Homeric legend, attempted to do to Ulysses? And if so, could you blame her? This kid's a natural: a real Irish choirboy with an old-world brogue and a penchant for reciting poetry. He obviously needs seducing. Ah, Liam, me boy, you're in for a bumpy ride... or rather, a picaresque romp from the footlights of backstage Dublin to the hollers of Appalachia, on to Cambridge, Mass., and New York's zany, East Village arts "scene," where you'll meet everybody who's anybody. And, every once in a while, right back home to Carrick again, trailing clouds of cultural alienation. And great green gobs of maternal disapprobation. There are enough imbedded elements of Tom Jones that one could easily conclude this has just got to be fiction. So it's well the author pinches us awake, as social injustice, poverty, narrow-mind religious judgementalism, moral hypocrisy and intellectual vapidity present themselves. Not that any of that stops our hero. As he describes becoming a force to be reckoned with-first on the stage, and then in popular music-Liam Clancy is forthright about a few gaffs and stumbles. The hardest to swallow-given the idealization of family that serves as oxygen during his early life-is brief, bitter mention of a daughter, the product of an early relationship, whom he largely declined to be a father to. An included photograph of the author, posed beside this beautiful child, is simply disturbing. As the memoir ends, The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem are just about to reach the inexplicable pinnacle of fame as accidental musicians. A bit unsettled by the nutty East Village scene, our boys momentarily return to the village of their roots-where the local townfolk haven't changed a bit-they are, as ever, totally insane. Back they go to New York. The reader senses the chronicle ahead. . . Fame is fleeting, the singing group will eventually tire of life on the road, and, after all, to many amps can you crank a pennywhistle before someone's sinus linings hit a harmonic? One prays for Volume Two, wherein Liam, classical hero that we know him to be, crowns life's journey with maturity and self-knowledge, and expiates a life of fond transgressions by founding his own rollicking, loving Celtic dynasty. Of course, Volume 2 will need to be as thoughtful, resonant, funny and well-crafted as the present work, so that the reading of Liam's life remains in keeping with the living of it.
Rating:
Summary: Publishers Weekly Award
Review: PUBLISHERS WEEKLY AWARD Audio: Listen Up Awards 2002Audio: Listen Up Awards 2002
By Lynn Andriani and Shannon Maughan -- 1/6/2003 NONFICTION THE MOUNTAIN OF THE WOMEN: Memoirs of an Irish Troubadour by Liam Clancy, read by the author (Random House Audio). Irish folk musician Clancy masterfully recounts more than "40 years of acting, singing and great foolishness" with a powerful, melodic voice and guileless magnetism.
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