Listen Inside - Daily Book Previews From Readers In The Know By Simon Denman

Synopsis This sparkling memoir gives a personal view of Irish rural life from the Economic War of the 1930s to the farming boom and recession of the 1970s. It describes the upbringing of a Protestant only child on a farm in north Tipperary-an idyll interrupted by two years at school in Dublin during the 1940s. Taking over the farm on her father's death, working the land and animals the author recounts with great humour, acuity and poignancy her dealings, from the age of seventeen, at fairs throughout the country-Limerick, Kilrush, Cahirmee, Ballinasloe, Spancilhill -a lone woman in a man's world. With rare brio and eye for character, incident and idiosyncrasy, Quarton lovingly documents a world of country people, eccentric relatives, home cures and recipes, and unaffected living. Breakfast the Night Before is both entertaining and enduring. 'It makes riveting reading and I was desperately disappointed when I reached the final page. Marjorie Quarton is a natural storyteller'-Grania Willis, The Irish Field. 'I