This exuberant, touching memoir opens on St Patrick's Day, 1936, with America in the throes of the Great Depression. The six-year-old author, accompanied by his younger sister Anne-Marie and their spirited but vulnerable mother, has just arrived on the porch of their new home in Albany, where his feckless, often absent father has promised a brave new life will begin. But the father never shows up, and the family are thrown back once again on their own resources. For the next 8 years, through the end of the Great Depression and into World War Two, they live in the heart of the Irish slum, surrounded by ward heelers, unemployment and grinding poverty, as well as the eccentric ?crazyladies' of the title. Told from the point of view of the author's younger self, with honesty, candour and a fascinating eye for period detail, Crazyladies offers a marvellous portrait of a child forced to grow up too fast. A funny, deeply moving memoir, which also paints a vivid portrait of a neighbourhood, a city and a whole nation of people waiting for a better life to come. ?Vivid and absorbing? PUBLISHING NEWS ?Literary time travel? WASHINGTON POST ?A heartfelt and unforgettable look back at one child's life in the 1930s and 1940s, that will be remembered long after the last page is turned.? SIMPLYAUDIOBOOKS.COM ?A nostalgic, richly textured autobiography. Trevanian sweetly evokes an innocent if hardscrabble lost age.? PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Trevanian was a shadowy figure. In his lifetime, he is said to have written under at least five different pseudonyms in at least five different genres, although he is probably best known for the spy thrillers The Eiger Sanction, The Loo Sanction and Shibumi and his highly acclaimed memoir The Crazyladies of Pearl Street. What is certain is that he was born an American named Rodney Whitaker, he spent much of his adult life in the French Basque country ? where The Summer of Katya is set ? and he died in 2005 in the west of England.
