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CHICAGO STORIES

By James T. Farrell

Edited by Charles Fanning

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University of Illinois Press, 256 pages, $17.95 paper

James Farrell, best known for his “Studs Lonigan” trilogy and chronicling of Chicago’s lower-middle-class Irish, wrote about his native city with tenderness but acuity. “Kilroy Was Here,” the final story in this important collection, portrays two men, one white and one black, who return to the South Side neighborhood where they were raised during different time periods. Through the men’s differing perspectives, Farrell describes the evolution of the neighborhood as though it were a relative he’d observed and worried about for years.