This refreshingly unusual book is mainly about rural Ireland in the 1940s and it is full of fun, enjoyment, insights and sheer delight in everything about that society. It describes everything that the current literary establishment refuses to admit existed in that place at that time.

But this author has no axe to grind, no agenda to follow. Herbert Remmel's objectivity derives from the fact that he was an outsider who found himself in the middle of the society and writes straight forwardly about what he experienced and the impressions made on him, and writes with great talent, vividly painting a variety of people and situations in a few sentences.

Herbert Remmel was one of the German children who was brought to Ireland after World War II by the Red Cross. His book begins with wartime life in Cologne and there is a graphic description of War and everyday life in a suburb of Cologne and further afield as experienced by a small child, his family and neighbours. The rest of his book is a child's eye view of Ireland as he found it just after the War, and as such is a joy to read and a welcome release from current dogmas about the awfulness of life in rural Ireland then and since.