Contributing writer

As a young lad in Tipperary, Liam Clancy, of the legendary Irish band The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, believed that “everyone sang all the time,“ that all families had the rollicking “singsongs” that made his family’s car trips and get-togethers so enjoyable. The realization that this was not the case, and that he and his brothers had been blessed with unique musical abilities, came with age.

The Mountain of the Women: Memories of an Irish Troubadour is Clancy’s account of the youthful meanderings that eventually brought him to the threshold of a famed musical career. The book is a collection of the vivid memories of an aging man attempting to recapture the glory of his youth, and there is no lack of compelling stories, both humorous and sad. In the first half of the memoir, Clancy grows up in the shadow of the Slievenamon (“Mountain of the Women” in English), so named for the nipple-like cairn on top of its breast-like form. The memoir’s second half focuses on his early experiences as a struggling actor in Cambridge, England and New York.

Surprisingly, it was Clancy’s passion for theater, not music, that spurred him to cross the pond to America, where the band was eventually formed. On the way, Clancy’s misadventures include being wooed by a Guggenheim heiress and keeping house with a psychic Radcliffe dropout in New York City. The book is almost too dense with such vignettes, but the sharp wit and storytelling ability of the “troubador” rescue it from the shallowness that comes with broad coverage. It may not be Angela’s Ashes, but, like the nipple cairn on Slievenamon, The Mountain of the Women stands out.

books

The Mountain of the Women:

Memories of an Irish Troubador

By Liam Clancy

Doubleday

294 pp., $24.95