Warrenpoint

October 1, 1990
Recalling his Roman Catholic boyhood in Protestant-dominated Northern Ireland, where his beloved father was a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary, Donoghue ( Reading America ) muses about guilt, humiliation, original sin, contrition, confession, virtuality and actuality. His short, choppy book stumbles from narrative to reflections about ``books that seem to invite an opportunistic reading,'' as well as about vibrato, an ``effeminate habit'' that ``registers the revulsion the soul feels in the presence of an enforced truth.'' Donoghue, who grew to be 67, thought that he was permanently misshapen, imprisoned in the wrong body. In Dublin, where he went to college and is now settled, a Protestant was as alien to him as a Muslim; and narrative, the clearest form of Catholic customary knowledge, lost its power--as it has in this disturbing memoir.