The Road to McCarthy: Around the World in Search of Ireland - Hardcover

McCarthy, Pete

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9780007162123: The Road to McCarthy: Around the World in Search of Ireland

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 000716212X ISBN 13: 9780007162123

Publisher: Harper, 2004

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Pete McCarthy established one cardinal rule of travel in his bestselling debut McCarthy's Bar: "Never pass a bar with your name on it." In this equally wry and insightful follow-up, Pete's characteristic good humor, curiosity, and thirst for adventure take him on a fantastic jaunt around the world in search of his Irish roots -- from Morocco, where he tracks down the unlikely chief of the McCarthy clan, to Rocky Sullivan's in New York, where he braves a crowd of stratospherically drunken Scotsmen in the midst of their St. Patrick's Day celebrations -- just before he is engulfed by a sea of green plastic bowler hats on Fifth Avenue.

After clocking thousands of miles and landing in more than a few exotic locations, he finally reaches his coveted destination: a remote and sparsely populated Alaskan town (named McCarthy, of course) where the eighteen townspeople are far outnumbered by the bears. Risking life, limb, and liberty in an almost heroic effort to trace his own lineage, he also happens to discover the peculiar and fascinating history of McCarthys everywhere while managing to down a few good pints along the way.

Packed with unexpected detours and dozens of hilarious moments, The Road to McCarthy is a quixotic and anything but typical Irish odyssey that confirms Pete McCarthy's status as one of the funniest and most incisive authors writing today.

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About the Author:

Pete McCarthy was born to an Irish mother and an English father. He is a hugely popular British television personality and the author of the critically acclaimed international bestseller McCarthy's Bar. He is also a recent winner of the British Book Awards Newcomer of the Year Award and the Irish Post Award for Literature.

From Publishers Weekly:

In the bestselling McCarthy's Bar, McCarthy had one rule: never pass a bar with your name on it. In Road it's: never pass a part of the world with your name in or on it. Thus this genealogist-cum-pint-swilling adventurer embarks on a frolicsome, drunken globe-trot to uncover the roots of all things McCarthy and in the process expose what it means to be a McCarthy and, by extension, to be Irish. It's a lively, lusty quest; McCarthy travels like a Renaissance explorer with a film director's lens. In Tangiers, he finds a Moroccan McCarthy who puts a unique spin on the term "black Irish." He takes in America's premier Irish event, New York's St. Patrick's Day Parade (which he finds more Celtic and American than Irish and not a little Scottish besides). Next stop: Tasmania, the penal colony where so many Irish were sent by the British government. And how could he resist a visit to the town of McCarthy, Alaska, population 18? The ultimate mocking tour guide with acerbic charm, McCarthy delivers scathing critiques of people and places, himself included. His droll and often drunken existentialist view proffers a unique (and distinctly Irish) perspective on the world that is part history, part McCarthy's Law. Some may be put off by his frequent references to drugs, sex and overimbibing, but McCarthy is like a character out of contemporary Irish literature, a traveler on a winding road surrounded by life's imperfections yet finding them beautiful despite it all (especially after a pint or two). Photos, maps.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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