The jacket blurb, just short of ecstatic, hails Sweetly Sings the Donkey as a "sad, funny, beautiful, utterly captivating memoir" in which Shelagh Delaney "reveals herself as a young woman not only of uncommon talent but of rare charm and appeal."… Sweetly Sings the Donkey is a collection of her acrid memories, perceptive observations and stringent comments.

This ode to disenchantment brings into sharp focus the author's strange ambivalence; compassion and cynicism, tenderness and brutality, despair and laughter battle for supremacy. But how this girl can write! The natural sense of theatre, so brilliantly demonstrated in her plays, is equally evident in this collection. Her taut dramatic situations are handled expertly; her characters, stripped of non-essentials, have size, dimension and throb with life; but, without question, Miss Delaney's forte is her impeccable ear for dialogue. She unerringly chooses the words and rhythms that are precisely right for each...