In playwright Carole O'Malley Gaunt's absorbing new memoir, "Hungry Hill," we find the classic ingredients of this kind of tale. The book's title comes from the predominantly Irish-American neighborhood in Springfield where the author's family lived. In Gaunt's narrative, there are the mixed blessings of Catholicism -- the parochial-school nuns who teach crucial life lessons but also demand unquestioning obedience to the church. There is also alcoholism, in the case of Gaunt's father, and the shame, secrecy, and tragedy it brings to the family. There are the first stirrings of romantic yearning, the battle between Gaunt's youthful hormones and societal restrictions. Most of all, there's agonizing loss: Both of Gaunt's parents died before she graduated from Springfield's Cathedral High School .
Gaunt opens her memoir with the death of her mother from cancer. It's 1959 , and the author is 13 , the only girl in a house with seven boisterous brothers and a father who increasingly turns to whiskey. Although Gaunt is a remarkably responsible teenager, she is powerless against the emotional chaos her mother's death brings. Looking at her bereft father, Gaunt writes: "I feel as if I need to break into a tap dance to jar him back from wherever his sadness for my mother has led him." She takes on the unenviable role of family referee, breaking up sibling battles, one of which is triggered by brother Joey's love of the New York Yankees.
Gaunt studies hard at Cathedral High School and is even elected to class office. But she's unhappy with her lot (what's the use of a happy childhood for a memoir?). She presents a litany of sins committed by her father, including not attending her performance in a high school play, not reading the articles she's written for the school newspaper, and asking too many questions about her dates. Worst of all, her father starts dating and soon marries a woman whom Gaunt ends up loathing.
