The Young Wan

This prequel to the bestselling Agnes Browne trilogy unveils the hilarious and earthy backstreet beginnings of its Dublin heroine. The Young Wan - or girl - is O'Carroll's feisty young widow before she became one, growing up in 1940s Dublin with lifelong best friend Marion Delany, as they survive the indignities of schoolteacher nuns, unwelcome siblings, first jobs, and first encounters with the opposite sex. Agnes learns the street market trade from a tough ex-con and is about to marry the good-for-nothing charmer Redser Browne. But in this fishbowl world, not only her mother fears that Agnes will be turned away at the altar if she persists in wearing white. For, within Agnes there buds already the first of the family to whom she'll become the ur-Irish mother.