I Regret Almost Everything

McNally is the author of I Regret Almost Everything. Because the text is McNally’s memoir, McNally renders his account using his first-person point of view. He employs an honest and open tone, affecting a confessional mood. Although the memoir focuses on McNally’s ongoing work in New York’s restaurant industry, he also incorporates events from his childhood life into his personal account.

McNally was born in 1951 to Joy and Jack McNally. He, his parents, and three siblings, Brian, Peter, and Josephine, “grew up in Bethnal Green in a one-story house known as a pre-fab, half a million of which were slapped together in working-class areas after the war to compensate for the country’s housing shortage” (27). McNally claims that his childhood home was an overt symbol of his family’s “poverty-stricken” state (27). For years to come, McNally would live in shame of his working-class origins and make every attempt to escape them.

McNally’s parents rarely got along and McNally often fought with his brothers—resulting in a contentious home and family life throughout McNally’s childhood. Although McNally was close with his sister when he was young, he dropped out of school and left home at 16.