…Edna O’Brien’s memoir, “Country Girl.” I had never read any of O’Brien’s novels, but I had a recollection this was good, and it was on the “Free” shelf in the café, so… (I cashed in Tom Friedman’s “From Beirut to Jerusalem” for it.)

Adele says the best part of bio- and auto-bios are childhoods, and that was certainly the case here. Actually the book was good through the custody fight following O’
Brien’s divorce, but once, after winning, she shipped her two sons off to boarding school, things disintegrated into a great deal of name-dropping. Some of was worthy of a raised eyebrow, like her one-night stand with Robert Mitchum, and her visit from Samuel Beckett while in a flash-back from an acid trip she had taken with R.D. Lange. I got as far as her us-gals friendship with Jackie Kennedy Onassis, when I decided I’d had enough. The flashes of fine writing were there but not the substance.

But it was worth every cent.