THE SHINY RED HONDA review
A wonderful coming-of-age story set in the Ireland of the late fifties and early sixties,The Shiny Red Honda evokes images of a more innocent time, when life was lived at a more gentle pace and people were stoical in the face of hardship, taking the bad with the good as simply part of life’s cycle. Tom O’Brien’s writing is stark and vivid and straight to the point, but always tempered with a wry humour, never taking himself too seriously. We travel with him through his upbringing on a small-holding in County Waterford, sometimes hard, but mostly carefree, and then his emergence from fumbling adolescent to a young working man who played guitar in his spare time in the newly emerging pop/rock band scene of that era. Tom describes everything so beautifully that I found myself re-reading some pages, just for the sheer joy of it. This is one of the best autobiographical books I’ve read in ages, if not THE best, and I can’t wait to read more of Tom O’Brien’s work.
› Go to Amazon.com to see the review 5.0 out of 5 stars