The Young Wan (Hardback)
Before she was a Mammy, before she had Chisellers, and before they made her a Granny, Agnes Brown was Agnes Reddin, a young girl - or a Young Wan growing up in the Jarro in Dublin.
In this beautifully written prequel readers are taken back to the heart of working-class Dublin where the women shout private gossip across the lane where everyone knows everyone else’s business.
There Agnes is born to Connie and Bosco Reddin, two parents from completely different backgrounds, she the homely head of an accounting office, he a dashing factory worked and union organizer with their own tumultuous past and whirlwind courtship to recount. Together with her soon to be lifelong best friend Marion Delany, young Agnes manages to survive the indignities and demands of nuns and Catholic school, the unwanted births of siblings, first encounters with the opposite sex, days spent in the factories and markets, and nights in the dance hall as rock-and-roll invades Dublin.
But on the eve of her wedding night, the Jarro is abuzz with gossip - will Agnes be turned away at the altar? For the whole parish knows Agnes' not-so-well-kept secret. And with a mother falling further into dementia, and a younger sister turning to a life of crime, it's up to Agnes alone to keep her splintering family together, while trying to create one of her own.
Filled with Brendan’s trademark wicked wit and loving, larger-than-life characters, The Young Wan shows the hardscrabble beginnings of the ultimate Irish mother and family.