That's That

Praise

Praise for That’s That

“Colin Broderick is in the front rank of Irish storytellers. In this memoir he walks us through Irish history and mythology, explores fallacies, tells us of savagery and humor, all in simple but colorful language. I exhort you to read That’s That and obviously that is that.”
—Malachy McCourt  


“That’s That is Broderick’s apotheosis. It’s the hard won testament he brought back from his broken past. It turned out that it was love and not war that shaped him, but it can take half a lifetime to figure that out if the world you grew up in was daily rocked by bombs and barbarism. In That’s That Broderick does something that takes remarkable courage, he tells the truth. It’s the ultimate revolutionary act. It isn’t his parent’s truth or his community’s truth. It’s his own, and it’s unassailable.”
—Cahir O’Doherty, Irish Voice

“A Northern Irish gutbucket version of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Colin Broderick writes with clarity and heart about a time of moral ambiguity, when war and repression were daily facts of life.”
—T. J. English, author of The Savage City and Paddy Whacked
 
“Broderick renders the conflict in the North of Ireland with an intimacy and honesty at once brutal, poignant, and unforgettable. Somehow, amid a landscape of ancient hatreds and unblinking cruelties, he manages to unearth the possibilities of hope and redemption. He is writer of extraordinary talent.” 
—Peter Quinn, author of Looking for Jimmy and Hour of the Cat

“What poverty is to ANGELA’S ASHES political turmoil is to THAT’S THAT, Colin Broderick’s stirring coming-of-age memoir of growing up Catholic in the North during the so-called Troubles.  Written with verve and raw honesty, the book is both a captivating saga of personal discovery and the  eye-opening story of how one boy experienced this shocking chapter in Irish history.” 
—Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate