If you were charmed by Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes but wished at times that the author would have got out of the way of his own beguiling style, try All Souls: A Family Story from Southie (Beacon Press; 288 pages; $24), Michael Patrick MacDonald's guileless and powerful memoir of precarious life and early death in Boston's Irish ghetto.
MacDonald, 33, grew up and still lives in South Boston, a legendary ethnic enclave that contains one of the country's highest concentrations of white poverty. The distinction is not appreciated by Southie residents, who bristle at being lumped with the black and Hispanic...
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