An Only Child

Autobiography of Frank O'Connor #1

by Frank O'Connor

The story of Frank O'Connor is that of a shy child from a Cork slum who becomes aware that there is something beyond the confines of his life and the lives around him, something grander. And with resolve and labor, he makes his way toward it. From his childhood to the time of his release from imprisonment as a revolutionary, O'Connor conveys the moral fortune and the tragic elements of life, that sparked his storytelling - a life he describes as a "celebration of those who for me represented all I should ever know of God."

Genres: Irish Literature, Memoir

Paperback

First published January 1, 1961

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.

Frank O’Connor (born Michael Francis O'Connor O'Donovan) was an Irish author of over 150 works, who was best known for his short stories and memoirs. Raised an only child in Cork, Ireland, to Minnie O'Connor and Michael O'Donovan, his early life was marked by his father's alcoholism, indebtness and ill-treatment of his mother.

He was perhaps Ireland's most complete man of letters, best known for his varied and comprehensive short stories but also for his work as a literary critic, essayist, travel writer, translator and biographer.[5] He was also a novelist, poet and dramatist.[6]

From the 1930s to the 1960s he was a prolific writer of short stories, poems, plays, and novellas. His work as an Irish teacher complemented his plethora of translations into English of Irish poetry, including his initially banned translation of Brian Merriman's Cúirt an Mheán Oíche ("The Midnight Court"). Many of O'Connor's writings were based on his own life experiences — his character Larry Delaney in particular. O'Connor's experiences in the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War are reflected in The Big Fellow, his biography of Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins, published in 1937, and one of his best-known short stories, Guests of the Nation (1931), published in various forms during O'Connor's lifetime and included in Frank O'Connor — Collected Stories, published in 1981.

O'Connor's early years are recounted in An Only Child, a memoir published in 1961 but which has the immediacy of a precocious diary. U.S. President John F. Kennedy quoted from An Only Child in his remarks introducing the American commitment to land a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Kennedy described the long walks O'Connor would take with his friends and how, when they came to a wall that seemed too formidable to climb over, they would throw their caps over the wall so they would be forced to scale the wall after them. Kennedy concluded, "This nation has tossed its cap over the wall of space and we have no choice but to follow it."[7] O'Connor continued his autobiography through his time with the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, which ended in 1939, in his book, My Father's Son, which was published in 1968, after O'Connor's death.

Reviews

[Iva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frank O'Connor is a dream of a writer and this memoir loosely covers his first 20 years. The theme of his close relationship he had with his mother is the centerpiece of the book as is his often-anthologized short story My Oedipus Complex. His story, perhaps on the surface matches Angela's Ashes, but clearly not an Irish cliche, covers his alcoholic father, his saintly mother, and his close observations of the people of his rural Irish childhood. Taking place in the early 20th century, but written near the end of his life, this is a well-crafted memoir.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

His boyhood - til age 20 - from 1903 to 1923.
This is what Angela's Ashes should have been like.
Happy, sad, inciteful, well written...

[Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frank O'Connor, AN ONLY CHILD

This is an extraordinary memoir by the famous Irish short-story writer Frank O'Connor, providing an account of the first two decades of his life in the 20th century. The narrative begins with a record of e culminating around 1923, toward the end of the Irish Civil War, at a time when O'Connor was emerging into adulthood, as internally-challenged/divided as his emerging nation, and forced to make decisions about the values that should shape his life and his work.

Definitely at the top of my "memoirs" list. The authors voice is consistently thoughtful, sometimes highly amusing, often deeply moving.

[Devs38 · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good book, but not a great book. I enjoyed O'Connor's portrayal of his childhood, but wasn't impressed by his representations of young adulthood. He's overly cynical and the anecdotes and opinions are disjointed. it is however a great historical document that brings to life what things were like in and around Cork Ireland in the first couple of decades of the 20th Century. it hightened my interest in the Irish Civil war circa 1920/21. its difficult to figure out what O'Connor believed and supported, but he did have direct involvement and tells the story as story versus as documentary narrative.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this first volume of his autobiography, Frank O’Connor recounts his childhood growing up poor in Cork City, Ireland. But the book is most powerful as he tells his mother’s story: a childhood in an orphanage, life in service in various households and marriage to an alcoholic ex-soldier, who hoarded his pension for getting drunk. O’Connor excels as a storyteller and in his ability to present character succinctly with balance and respect.

[Akov · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir or partial autobiography is remarkable for its wry reflective intelligence, vividness and grace, and most of all for its account of rock-bottom poverty in Cork, Ireland, in the first two decades of the twentieth century. It is kind of amazing that someone growing up in such poverty, with an alcoholic father and an orphaned career maid for a mother, ever became one of his country’s premier writers.

An Only Child was written in 1958-1960, published in 1961. Frank O’Connor (real name Michael O’Donovan) was an Irish writer of short stories and plays and literary criticism who died in 1966. He was a big deal back in the middle of the 20th century, his stories appearing in American as well as Irish publications. He became an important part of the Abbey Theatre, for which Yeats also wrote. (Yeats had high praise for O’Connor.)

By age 19 O’Connor was joining in Irish efforts to rebel against the British, efforts described in this book as rampant blundering, sometimes comical, by men who seemed to cling to romantic illusions about going to a brave death. The memoir ends in 1922 after that fighting ended.

[Patricia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reading loads during lockdown and this is the first book that disappointed. Really did not like him.. namedropping, quoting selective ’good’ literature etc etc
I looked up and enjoyed a poem referenced: Walter De La Mere’s The Suicide which has a verse beginning ‘Steep hung the drowsy street’. (The author states that the poem begins with this line.)
There is a nice paragraph about poetry here (p176-7): When life is at its harshest ‘when so sad thou can’st not sadder be’ poetry comes into its own. ......is spoken fluently only by those whose existence is already aflame with emotion, for then the beauty and order of language are the only beauty and order possible. Above all, it is the art of the boy and girl overburdened by the troubles of their sex and station, for as Jane Austen so wistfully noted, the difficulty with it is that it can best be appreciated by those who should enjoy it most sparingly.

[Gail Kennon]

his style was a little hard to follow but i found it paid off in illuminating his personal history and a slice of irish history.