When I was a kid, my Grandpa practically threw my brother out of the room for wearing a T-shirt with the Union Jack on it (I think it was the Kinks, if that matters...). It was something we laughed about for years; after reading this famine history it seems a little less funny. Unlike
The Famine Plot, this is not a chronological examination of events and policy; rather, it is a portrait of the experience of ordinary Irish men and women during the famine. Much of the detail is horrific and gruesome and painfully sad to read. The latter portion deals with a journey on a 'coffin ship' to New York and the experiences of immigrants' arrival in that city. This was less interesting to me, probably because as an American reader I have read so many accounts of 19th century NY tenement life for all sorts of immigrant groups that the story loses specificity. Occasionally too sentimental for my taste, but very vivid.
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