I’ve never seen a photo of someone frowning on Facebook. In Facebook Land, no one ever loses his job, wakes up hungover, or feels lonely. Even in the real world, we’re encouraged to tack on a phony smile and keep anything sad or troublesome to ourselves. It takes a brave author to own up to his failures and write them all down, chronologically, in a 300-page jumble for the entire world to read. And although he barely lived to tell his story, Colin Broderick’s debut memoir Orangutan reminds his readers that everyone makes mistakes. Lots of them.
Broderick’s story begins in a new city—New York. At twenty-one, he moved out of County Tyrone to “escape the caged feeling of living as a Catholic in the British-occupied North of Ireland.” On the morning after his arrival, he wakes up drunk and not sure where he is or how he got there. Broderick and thirteen other Irish immigrants peel themselves up off the floor to go to work. Broderick’s cousin owns a floor sanding business and in one day, the author makes more money than he’d make in a month back home. After hours of backbreaking labor, Broderick and his crew head to a local bar for drinks. And even though he’s still wearing the same clothes he wore when he left Ireland, the author can’t turn down a drink with his new friends. (more)
