Title: All Souls
Author: Michael Patrick MacDonald
Genre: Memoir
Date Published: September 1999
# Pages: 296
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Recommended?: Yes
A chronicle of the tumultuous and devastating upbringing of Michael MacDonald,, “All Souls” is characterized by the blunt honesty and heart-wrenching anecdotes of MacDonald’s life in South Boston. Michael and his 10 siblings were raised in Old Colony in South Boston, and it was a neighborhood of feigned closeness. The apparent threats of poverty, drugs, and shadowy gangsters had a direct effect on Michael, as he ultimately lost four of his siblings due to such violence. “All Souls” is a heart-breaking testimony of lives lost too early and a story of how a region with the poorest white population in the United States was nonetheless still blindly considered "the best place in the world" by those who lived there. Additionally, for all of us here at Boston College, it is an absolute necessity that we learn about the inherent racism that permeated Boston’s past less than 40 years ago. “All Souls” serves as an up close and personal inside account of Boston’s deeply divided demographic and economic landscape. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND!
Review by Morgan Healy, LSOE '16
Author: Michael Patrick MacDonald
Genre: Memoir
Date Published: September 1999
# Pages: 296
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Recommended?: Yes
A chronicle of the tumultuous and devastating upbringing of Michael MacDonald,, “All Souls” is characterized by the blunt honesty and heart-wrenching anecdotes of MacDonald’s life in South Boston. Michael and his 10 siblings were raised in Old Colony in South Boston, and it was a neighborhood of feigned closeness. The apparent threats of poverty, drugs, and shadowy gangsters had a direct effect on Michael, as he ultimately lost four of his siblings due to such violence. “All Souls” is a heart-breaking testimony of lives lost too early and a story of how a region with the poorest white population in the United States was nonetheless still blindly considered "the best place in the world" by those who lived there. Additionally, for all of us here at Boston College, it is an absolute necessity that we learn about the inherent racism that permeated Boston’s past less than 40 years ago. “All Souls” serves as an up close and personal inside account of Boston’s deeply divided demographic and economic landscape. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND!
Review by Morgan Healy, LSOE '16
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