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Summary: Brendan O'Carroll, I love you.
Review: "The Mammy" is one of my favorite books. I loved the characters, especially best friends, Agnes and Marion. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves to laugh, enjoys great characters, and can appreciate a wonderfully told story. Brendan O'Carroll, I love you, and I pray you are busy writing more novels because I will buy every book you have published. Anyone who buys this book should also order "The Chisellers" and "The Granny". After falling in love with Agnes Browne and her family, you will want more. I wasn't sure if the next two books could be as good as "The Mammy" but they were just as great!
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Summary: GRAND!
Review: Oh, Brendan O'Carroll, you put a twinkle into my emerald green eyes. I laughed out loud with my bedroom window open, and I am sure my neighbor's thought me daft, or up to something roguish. This marvelous tale of Agnes Browne and her brood of seven, is delighfully rich with humor, truth, and substance. It is rather like reading Frank McCourt on anti-depressants. I am in love with this impoverished family, and would gladly join their clan. I will read on to "The Chisellers" and "The Granny." This is a most entertaining read for a rainy afternoon or a sunny beach blanket, or a snuggled down to sleeptime.
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Summary: You'll fall in love with the Browne Family
Review: O'Carroll brings you a heartwarming tale about Agnes and her family. You will laugh and cry and want to know more about everyone she comes in contact with. Reading this book alone will not be enough you'll want to run out and get The Chisellers and Granny. This is not a complex read but you do have to remember all of the children and there individual characteristics. Just so you can tell the boys apart. Agnes is a great mother and has dealt w/a lot including a "mean" nun and a mushy cucumber. You'll laugh. You'll cry. But you'll keep going back for more.
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Summary: Without Qualification, Flawless
Review: The photograph on the cover of this book is spectacular, and everything Mr. Brendon O'Carroll includes within is wonderful! This Irish tale is unlike any other I have read. The book is not cluttered with Irish cliché's, which even if true to one degree or another, can nonetheless become tiresome. It has often been said that there are no happy endings in an Irish tale, and while this is the first installment of three, it would take multiple disasters to change the overall mood of this Family and Friends.The story is about two female friends, the joy they share, their everyday lives, and the pain that all relationships eventually suffer. However this friendship is not subject to damage or limitation. The dialogue is a riotous tear from beginning to end. Your own laughter will continually interrupt your page turning, but the intrusions are part of the fun. The characters laugh until they hold their sides, and you will be as well as Mr. O'Carroll's dialogue is brilliant. There is a scene when a driving lesson is to take place. If I have read better humor I cannot remember what it was. The wonderful part of the laughter in this book is that it is not only for covering the pain of daily life. The lives you encounter are far from consistently ideal, but the laughter and joy these women share and spread is genuine, not dark, and not meant as emotional misdirection. This is a brief work, however the Author managed to include so much more than emotional extremes. The 15-year-old eldest son of Agnes meets a man who offers him money for a job that makes no sense to the boy. Think of every negative direction this opening can take and then forget them all. Mr. O'Carroll takes this vignette within, "Mammy", and shows so much of what Humanity could be. The beauty of this mini-tale is that it is not the naïve thoughts of wide-eyed youth. It is a look at how people should treat each other, what should be important when we meet someone, and most importantly how foolish our normal reactions routinely are. This is one very talented man with a pen, and he made this Christmas a memorable one for me.
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Summary: hilarious- a real dubliners' read
Review: If you are from Dublin, the northside of course, you will really get a kick out of this book, typical of Dublin in the sixties, with the money lenders, hard times, yet, everyone made it thru'. O'carroll really made it with this book and the 2 that followed.
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Summary: The Mammy Is an Excellent Story
Review: This is an excellent book. I never laughed out loud when reading a book before, but this book will make you burst with laughter. It's really well written..Make sure you read all three books in this trilogy. The second is ok, but the third is completely fabulous.
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Summary: hilarious
Review: This book is hilarious. It is one of the funniest, if not the, funniest books I have ever read. The characters are delightfully charming. Although there are some serious matters that deal with everyday life it is still very light hearted.
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Summary: Some weak moments but overall well worth reading
Review: This book has some of the funniest and most touching scenes I can remember reading, but at some points the writing seems to be straining for the laugh, unlike Roddy Doyle's work.
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Summary: Excellent!
Review: Very fast moving book. Once I started reading it I could not put it down. Great book!
Rating:
Summary: A delight to read!
Review: I really enjoyed this look at the all to typical family life of Agnes Browne. Agnes, who may not be the brightest mammy on the block, has a certain sincerity about her that allows the reader to take to heart her everyday life and find serval comparisions of it to their own. This book, which deals with very pressing issues such as cancer and the death of a spouse, concludes with the notion that if you live whole-heartedly and are true to yourself and family, life will find a way of turning tradegy into a livable, sometimes even delightful, experience. What a great BOOK!
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