n Two memoirs of growing up in a divided island stand out. Seamus Deane's lyrical Reading in the Dark and Frank McCourt's heart-rending Angela's Ashes share common themes, notably getting an education despite the brutalising, stultifying schooling operated by the priests who ran the system in Eire when McCourt was growing up and in Roman Catholic Derry in Deane's time. There was no joy of learning, only terror. Doors were closed, literally and figuratively, in the face of the bright young McCourt by the Church. Deane and the RC community in forties and fifties Derry suffered terrible discrimination because of their religion. The troubles are peripheral to Angela's Ashes, central to Reading in the Dark. Deane's message, so apt with the peace talks at a critical stage, is that the myths, prejudices, and even the occasional truths of the past must not straitjacket the future.
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