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MEMOIR:The Invisible Prison: Scenes from an Irish ChildhoodBy Pat Boran, Dedalus Press, 262pp. €24.99 (hbk) €13.99 (pbk)

IRISH WRITERS have often found inspiration in or around prisons, what with Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaoland Behan’s Borstal Boy, among other key texts. In his gentle and affectionate memoir of growing up in the Midlands in the 1960s and 1970s Pat Boran draws on the image of the nearby prison and uses it as a counterpoint in writing about his family home on Main Street, Portlaoise. At first sight the title of the book, The Invisible Prison, might suggest something repressive or even claustrophobic, but Boran’s memories are handled with a lightness of touch in this lively and good-humoured account of growing up in the centre of a small Irish town.