Falls Memories: A Belfast Life

by Gerry Adams

Falls Road looks completely different now from when Gerry Adams was a child living on it. Many of the businesses, houses, and landmarks have been demolished in favor of new developments. Even when Adams first wrote his memoir of Falls Road in 1982, many of these places were still around―a point Adams makes very clearly in his foreword to this most recent edition.

Genres: Ireland, Memoir, Nonfiction, History, Biography, Irish Literature

144 pages, Paperback

First published February 11, 1982

About the author

Gerard "Gerry" Adams, MLA, MP (Irish: Gearóid Mac Ádhaimh; born 6 October 1948) is an Irish republican politician and abstentionist Westminster Member of Parliament for Belfast West. He is the president of Sinn Féin, the political party at the top of the latest North of Ireland election polls amidst a three-way split in the traditionally dominant unionist vote. Sinn Féin is the second largest party in the Northern Assembly.

From the late 1980s onwards, Adams has been an important figure in Ireland's peace process, initially following contact by the then Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader John Hume and subsequently with the Irish and British governments and then other parties. In 2005, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) indicated that its armed campaign was over and that it is now exclusively committed to democratic politics. Under Adams, Sinn Féin changed its traditional policy of abstentionism towards Oireachtas Éireann, the parliament of Ireland, in 1986 and later took seats in the power-sharing Northern Assembly. However, Sinn Féin retains a policy of abstentionism towards the Westminster Parliament.

Reviews

[Steve Dyster · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leave "politics" on the doorstep and enter the world of the Falls Road, Gerry Adams' native habitat. This is a grand local history written not just in the cold light of research, but with a love and understanding of the people in the area and a fascination with its social history and traditions. From a country lane to a heavily industrially urbanised suburb, through to redevelopment, the author traces the physical development of the area and the fortunes of the people who lived there. This is local history written with authority and a smile. That should not mask the underlying tensions and bigotry which underlie the traditional image of Belfast. The picture here is very nuanced, and you just wonder how Belfast life might have turned out had the dynamics and decision of Loyalists, Republicans, Catholics, Protestants, local and national governments, had been more nuanced and careful of others. Although a micro-history of one part of Belfast, the author readily makes one aware that things were much more complex, human, changeable, than the oft told tale of sectarianism. In that sense, I felt this was a hopeful story, although deeply depressing at times.

Gerry Adams is an engaging and entertaining writer. I love the way he starts the book with an apology for the slightly misleading title: this is not a memoir or just his memories - although they are occasionally there, as you'd expect in the more recent times. The inclusion of so many catches and street songs is a great way of showing the reader local humour, values, work, daily life.

There are two things I'd like to see; maps that coincide more specifically with the text; and a more extensive glossary/notes of some terms and dialect words familiar, no doubt, to Belfast folk, but which had me googling away frantically when I wanted to carry on enjoying the reading. For enjoying the book is just what I did. Fascinating content, written with infectious affection.

[Nile · Rating 4 out of 5]

I doubt anyone picking this up would get the read they expected - Adams delivers a set of memories that are for the most part other people's, and it turns out, we can't complain as the clue was in the title; these are the memories of the Falls, belonging to the Falls. This is the memoir of a neighbourhood and not of a man.

Some are his, admittedly, but they're the memories that build the grander picture of the area, rather than a picture of Adams.

That said, I'm sure his choice of memories would shock those going in with a preconceived idea of who Gerry Adams is, which is surely everyone. The sectarian bluster you'd assume simply isn't there, instead we find him incredibly even-handed and mostly positive in his assessment of Protestants as neighbours; if there's a single compliment to pay amongst a litany of complaints, he tells the compliment and assumes you know the complaints so doesn't repeat them. Stories of famously teetotal Catholic Adams working in a Protestant pub read like the tale of someone else entirely, but are incredibly illuminating when it comes to understanding his foundational politics, which are clearly closer to his long-held position when asked, rather than the sort of 'papist fanatic' we have got from press and pulpit for decades.

He's got a gift as a writer of both recollection and dialogue and I'd be interested in reading further, and certainly his autobiog.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gerry Adams is an extremely important postcolonial author as well as a leader of the Irish nationalist movement. Excellent memoirs.

[Sean Carroll · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly a socio-economic history of Belfast and the Falls Road, with brief slice-of-life interludes in the middle. Shout-outs like woah to a whole host of characters that could all get their own narratives. Not much in the way of autobiography.

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a collection of stories and characters in the Falls area sadly now largely gone due to progress and the troubles this is a pricless set of memories.

[Klf Barrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life in a Belfast Prison during The Troubles. Easy read and quite funny.