All Souls: A Family Story from Southie

My son and I both enjoyed this book very much especially because we live in Boston and recognize the places and people in the book

I grew up in Dorchester, which borders Southie. I've worked often in Southie - I drove cab there for a year, working out of the Broadway stand by the T stop, and I worked on D Street for four years in a warehouse. I've played ball in Southie for many years. I did way too much coke during most of those years, so I had occasion to be in amongst most of the types of folks MacDonald talks about. I'm also white, of Irish heritage, and approximately the same age as his older sibling Davey. In other words, I am not from Southie, but I'm probably as close as you can come without it being so.

This book rings absolutely true to me. The people mentioned and events described are all like people I've met in Southie and things I've done or seen done in Southie. I never lived in Old Colony, but I've been there and had friends who resided there. The author describes the general overall tone and feeling of Southie perfectly, IMHO.

Could he have gotten up on his soapbox and spouted off about how wrong some of the things being done were, i.e., selling stolen goods, his Mom not being quite as strict as she should have been, useless macho fights, etc.? Sure, but I think he gives the reader credit for already knowing that. This book isn't about morality - it's a memoir of a troubled family in troubled times, and how the author came out of it in the end. If you don't already bring to the book the knowledge that some of the incidents and actions of the characters are severely morally wrong, then his telling you won't help.

By the way, "lace curtain irish" is a very old expression. Folks in my family used it often to describe those who had "made it" to upper middle class living in Boston or suburbs.

Michael Patrick MacDonald does an amazing job of recounting his childhood as the "seventh son" in a large, single-parent household living in the "Jekyll and Hyde" atmosphere of South Boston.

Growing up 20 miles south of Boston, I was familiar with all things "Southie" - the Irish Pride, the code of silence, the hard-working, tight-knit community that seemed to ban together against all the violence, drugs, and crime that riddled other sections of Boston. It was an interesting glimpse into an insider's account of what truly went on as Southie slowly began to implode.

If you're looking for an expose, this isn't the book for you - this truly is a re-telling of one boy's family life and the effect the community (law enforcement, politician, and the criminal element) had on them - truly heart-wrenching at times, funny at others...and even maddening to read how personal agendas toyed with an entire community.

I thought that the book All Souls was an all around good book; it's one that was hard to put down. This book is about an Irish family with a single mom that has seven boys and two girls. They live in Boston on welfare so they have to keep moving around until they find the best place in the world-Old Colony, South Boston. The book tells about how the MacDonald family had to work at getting accepted into the neighborhood, by fighting and learning the rules of the neighborhood. Also, they tell about when the desegregation busing started and how the whole neighborhood stuck together to try and stop outsiders from coming in. It tells you about how the cops were crooked and would gang up on the people from the hood. After the busing was stopped then everyone started getting into drugs and alcohol. When the drugs started getting abused is when the MacDonald family wanted to leave Old Colony. After everyone used drugs, people were starting to die left and right from overdosing, suicide, and murders. No matter what no one would speak out and tell the cops anything because of the rules of the hood to keep things quiet. No matter how many bad things happened every one loved the neighborhood because everyone new each other and everyone knew the rules to look after each other. Even when people left Old colony they had to come back for one reason or another. All in all it's a good book about a good neighborhood that goes bad and people trying to leave until they realize they love the neighborhood and they can help make it better.

This is truly an eye-opener for people unaware as well as those who already know about the troubled past of South Boston. The tragedy in this autobiographical account of the author's childhood seems to always be a page turn away. It is truly staggering to eventually see in the end how many people's lives have been lost or wasted in one project in one small neighborhood of Boston.

On the other hand, you see a people whose own 'code' helped to perpetuate the neverending violence and drug abuse/dealing that they were so adamantly opposed to. South Boston of the 70's and 80's seems like a place that time forgot. Much of what it was like mirrors the South duruing the civil rights era from 2 decades prior.

The irony of the story is that the people of Old Colony in Southie were opposed to outside influence (mostly municipal, state, and federal gov't) yet they were living in gov't subsidized housing. Not only that but they felt as if they owned it. Of course, we now know that many of these gov't agencies were involved with Whitey Bulger's gang with people on both sides of the law.

When looking at the diverse neighborhoods in Boston today you can definitely see that progress has been made although some residual effects are still found in areas that are ethnically homogeneous. The hope that we can have and now see is that people like the author have had enough and are working with other people like him in different communities to end the cycle of violence and self-destruction that was far too commonplace in the not-so-distant past.