A Celtic Childhood

It's a brave act to publish a book that will inevitably be compared with Angela's Ashes in the same season as Frank McCourt's eagerly awaited sequel, 'Tis. Yet Watkins's demurely titled, rollicking memoir of his boyhood in postwar Ireland and England can bear the comparison, and it deserves to be read for its own brilliance, rhythm and structure. Laugh-out-loud funny, with an eccentric cast of characters (including a ""spheraphobic"" uncle who wouldn't eat anything round), Watkins's embellished childhood tales make for pure reading pleasure. Language lovers will be charmed by his expressions (""a great feast of a woman"") and the glossary of such exotic terms as doolally (to get mad at someone) and Adam and Eve it (believe it). Born in 1950 in Limerick, where, according to his mother, ""you can't spit without hitting a piece of history,"" Watkins inherited the bardic and musical talents of his parents. Mam was gregarious, beautiful and staunchly Irish and Catholic, always ready with a ballad. His Welsh father was raised in Britain and grew up to be an agnostic and freethinker given to drinking and good-natured fighting. The family lived happily in various places: a caravan (trailer), public housing and with his father's family in Birmingham, England. Covering the first 17 years of his life, this first installment in a projected trilogy is a fine coming-of-age story, woven from tales of Watkins's family, school days and boyish adventures, as well as of Catholicism, ghosts and his rambles as a teenage musician. Though it is laced with deprivation and pathos (including the loss of two babies), Watkins's story isn't permeated with the sadness of McCourt's work, though it's equally memorable. Four-city author tour. (Sept.) FYI: The second installment in Watkins's trilogy, Scotland Is Not for the Squeamish, is projected for publication in fall 2000.