All Souls

All Souls: A Family Story from Southie
Michael Patrick MacDonald

One maintains fond memories of home, even if it was one of the worst slums in America. Growing up in a stable farming community in rural Nova Scotia I have no grasp of what it would mean to  be robbed on the way to the store or fear to go out at night. To be white in a black slum and victimized because one was different. My first real exposure to such concepts was reading Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude. The relief that came from moving into an Irish-American Neighbourhood. To be incensed when racial integration saw those same Blacks forcibly bussed into your neighbourhood.

Poverty, substandard housing, single-parent families, lack of education, alcoholism, drugs, ill-health, malnutrition, crime, gangs; beatings, rape, murder, gang warfare, robbery. Growing up with these as an everyday experience would certainly influence one’s perspective and value system. That such conditions exist offends my sensibilities. MacDonald writes of shoplifting, grifting, thieving as a means of survival not as criminal activity.

Have you ever gotten the feeling while you were reading a book, this starts to feel like something I’ve read before. When I searched back through my Library database I finally came to the realization that I read this book in paperback when it came out in 1999. Can I be forgiven for forgetting after a decade and a half? It was a good read then and it still is. Just don’t expect happy endings.