Dodging Satan: My Irish/Italian Sometimes Awesome, but Mostly Creepy, Childhood

Dodging Satan is a hilarious and heartbreaking novel of growing up in an Irish/Italian Catholic family filled with religious certainty and ethnic strife. It outdoes Mary McCarthy's Memories of a Catholic Girlhood in its wit, intelligence and irresistible mixture of realism and charm. It is simply a joy to read. Written in the voice of Bridget, a young girl caught between visions of Satan and sanctity, bewitched in a Catholic school that enforces ideals of the holy family and a home filled with lively, arguing relatives, it is captivating in its mixture of humor and grit. Bridget makes her way through Irish, Italian and religious patriarchies with the heart and mind of a gifted observer looking for her own form of grace.