| Praise for Hungry Hill |
 Frank McCourt
Author of Angela's Ashes and Teacher Man
"This book should be placed in time capsules in
Springfield, Mass., and all across the country.
It' s more than a memoir. It's a social document,
a story of a family, a document on the human
heart. Since this is an Irish-American family
the ingredients are almost predictable: nuns,
priests, sacraments and the battle with the
bottle. What makes this book different is
Carole Gaunt's wise prose. She writes with such
compassion and understanding you ll look at
your own family the same way."
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Maureen McGlame
Director of COASA (Children of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse)
Robert F. Kennedy Children s Action Corps
"A vivid portrait of the transgenerational effects of alcoholism and
a courageous response to the disease... .The book captures the
essence of the isolation, fear, and sadness of a girl who, instead of
having a childhood, lived a dilemma-doing all the right things, being
a good girl who realizes that everything she does she does alone or
under an umbrella of shame and wishful thinking, living in a home
overshadowed by the effects of alcoholism from one generation to
the next"
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Madeleine Blais
Author of UphillWalkers: Portrait of a Family
"Hungry Hill is engaging and memorable . . .
One of the most endearing aspects of the book is
its lack of guile and its feeling of authenticity it
glows with honesty."
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Roger Rosenblatt
Author of Lapham Rising: A Novel
"Maybe the only thing stranger than the
pain families inflict upon one another is
the fact that one survives it. Carole Gaunt
has made a beautiful story of all that,
without a false note, a word wasted, or a
flinch. One is grateful for this memoir and
for the author who, as a child, kept her
eyes open."
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Christopher Durang
Author of Christopher Durang: 27 Short Plays
"To paraphrase Tolstoy, Happy families are all alike, but every alcoholic family is unhappy
in its own way. In this powerful memoir, Carole Gaunt writes of being the only girl in a family
with seven brothers and an alcoholic father, following the early death of her mother. For
those of us who also grew up around alcoholism, her story and insights are poignant and
involving. . . . Reading about the author seeking out jobs so she would never have to ask
her stepmother for money gave me a feeling of measured triumph in how the small choices
an individual makes can lead the way out of family traps; looking for those jobs and deciding
to look to herself for stability rather than to the crazy adults around her was the beginning
of health. But the book also shows how dysfunctional families rob their children of trust and
innocence way too soon, and how that haunts them in their later years. A moving story. "
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