What is the book?

April 30, 2006 12:28 PM

BookFilter: I need help figuring out which book this is. Very little information inside.

The book is about an immigrant family, possibly Irish, and the story traces three generations of this family until the Industrial Revolution. The book is most probably recent (since 2000 or so). I didn't read it and I'm looking for a customer at my store. Any help would be appreciated!

posted by Destroid to writing & language (6 answers total)

Is it fiction?
posted by stavrogin at 12:41 PM on April 30, 2006

Oh, sorry. Yeah, it's a novel.
posted by Destroid at 1:06 PM on April 30, 2006

This sounds similar.
posted by stavrogin at 1:45 PM on April 30, 2006

Maybe it's one of Andrew M. Greeley's books. He seems to write primarily about Irish immigrants, and I believe he has a series of books that follow the lives of one family over a few generations.
posted by zarah at 5:29 PM on April 30, 2006

It's probably not a book by William Kennedy, but if you are interested in books about the Irish in America, you'd enjoy his novels. Start with Ironweed, I would think.
posted by Ian A.T. at 9:55 PM on April 30, 2006

Do you mean the story begins a few generations before the Industrial Revolution and ends at the IR? (That's how it sounds to me.) Or do you mean it begins at the IR and then follows a few generations toward the present day?

Frank McCourt's two memoirs of his Irish-American immigrant youth (Angela's Ashes and 'Tis) have been huge bestsellers in the last 10 years or so. That's not exactly what the customer described, but might be worth mentioning just in case.

Second the suggestion of Andrew M. Greeley or other genre historical/romance fiction authors. There are also a lot of Irish immigrant novels for middle-schoolers. You might be able to narrow your search by ruling out (or in!) these categories.

I just quickly searched Amazon under the category "Irish American families" (sorted by publication date). My most promising result from doing this quickly was the Greeley series, though I also found Roots of the Blackthorn Tree by Basil Douros.
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:08 AM on May 2, 2006