The Clancys of Queens

Fifth-generation New Yorker, third-generation bartender, and first-generation author Tara Clancy was raised in three wildly divergent homes: a converted boat shed in working-class Queens, a geriatric commune of feisty Brooklyn-born Italians, and a sprawling Hamptons estate she visited every other weekend. From scheming and gambling with her force-of-nature grandmother, to brawling with eleven-year-old girls on the concrete recess battle yard of MS 172, to hours lounging on Adirondack chairs next to an immaculate croquet lawn, to holding court beside Joey O'Dirt, Goiter Eddy, and Roger the Dodger at her dad's local bar, Tara leapfrogs across these varied spheres, delivering stories from each world with originality, grit, and outrageous humor. Chock-full of characters who escape the popular imaginings of New York City, it offers a bold portrait of real people, whose stories are largely absent from our shelves. Most crucially, it captures--an inimitable prose--the rarely heard voices of New York's working-class women. --