Only Gypsies Move on Sunday

Irene McCoy’s humorous memoir begins in a blue-collar suburb outside of Chicago. The precocious youngster comes of age during the 1950s while putting up with an authoritative father, fearing the dreaded Commies, and haunted by the horrors of a nuclear holocaust. Later, as a married woman, she resigns herself to repeatedly packing up and following her journalist husband from cramped rooms in the Midwest and New York to accommodations in post-war Germany, none of which were likely to be featured in Better Homes and Gardens. Early on, she finds herself with a two-year-old in a country where she’s out of milk and diapers and stores are about to close for the weekend. Aha, so this is what angst is. While the author occasionally embellished a few facts and changed the names of some characters for the sake of privacy, Only Gypsies Move on Sunday will be welcomed by readers who enjoy a sly peek into the often-frantic lives of their contemporaries.