Death Need Not Be Fatal

A Memoir of Mirth and Tears MICHAEL SCANLON At the age of 85, Malachy McCourt stares down the barrel of the gun of death and comes to the conclusion that life - with all its tragedies - is only worth living if you add the ingredients of love, laughter, and adventure. This memoir offers us equal parts of tears and mirth as McCourt invites us on his picaresque journey called life. Imaginative and rollicking, you will fall in love with Malachy and hope the Grim Reaper gives him a pass.. Frank Would Have Been Proud Teddy the Dog I've pretty much read every word Malachy's brother has written. He was one of my favorite authors. DNNBF is certainly some of this McCourt's best writing. Frank would have been impressed. While the book is a look at a very serious matter (death) it's cloaked in McCourt's very funny and oftentimes hilarious outlook on life. It's a beautiful perspective from someone who has had many tough times. This book made me laugh. Which I suppose is the ultimate take away from this book. Death is all around us and well there's pretty much nothing to do but laug. zencat said The best 'McCourt' book ?. I read older brother Frank's books, Angela's Ashes and 'Tis , back when they first came out. The first one was quite compelling though incredibly sad. The second was a good memoir and a little less sad. By then I thought, that's it for me for McCourt books-- just too darn dark. Good, but dark.Now finally I've stumbled upon brother Malachy. I didn't expect his writing to be as good as Frank's but, oh yes, it is.Malachy covers a lot of the same dark history, the Irish sense of life itself as one big Irish Wake; death and drunkenness. But Malachy, at

McCourt writes with deep emotion of the staggering losses of all three of his brothers, Frank, Mike, and Alphie. In his inimitable way, McCourt takes the grim reaper by the lapels and shakes the truth out of him. As he rides the final blocks on his Rascal scooter, he looks, too, at the prospect of his own demise with emotional clarity and insight. It seems that the only two things he hasn't done are stick his head into a lion's mouth and die. Before he runs out of time, Irish bon vivant Malachy McCourt shares his views on death - sometimes hilarious and often poignant - and on what will or won't happen after his last breath is drawn.During the course of his life, Malachy McCourt practically invented the singles bar and was a pioneer in talk radio, a soap opera star, a best-selling author, a gold smuggler, a political activist, and a candidate for governor of the state of New York. In this beautifully rendered memoir, McCourt shows us how to live life to its fullest, how to grow old without acting old, and how to die without regret.. Since he is allergic to cats, he decided to write about the great hereafter and answer the question on most minds: What's so great about it anyhow? In Death Need Not Be Fatal, McCourt also trains a sober eye on the tragedies that have shaped his life: the deaths of his sister and twin brothers; the real story behind Angela's famous ashes; and a poignant account of the death of the man who