Part and parcel of a large and boisterous family, he is pushed around the streets of Dublin by his brothers; the small crippled occupant of a boxcar, silently witnessing the city's joys and woes. Tormented yet calm, he is the detached observer of life in the slums of forties and fifties, Dublin.

Written with the fearless discipline that Christy Brown had to establish over his own body, Down all the Days displays his lyrical gifts for language and insight to the full.