Overview of Lughnasa

• Dancing at Lughnasa opens with a monologue from Michael as an adult, he introduces his nostalgic memories of the summer of 1936, when he was seven years old being brought up by his four Aunts and his mother (the five Munday sisters) in rural Ireland and have acquired their first radio.
• The sisters older brother Father Jack, has just returned from twenty-five years spent as a missionary in a leper colony in Uganda.
• Michael was born out of wedlock to Chris and Gerry Evans, who deserted them and only returns every couple of years t see them.
• The radio which breaks down more than it works, unleashes unarticulated emotions in the five women, who spontaneously break into song and dance, with or without its aid.
• By the end of the year, Michael explains in another monologue Agnes and Rose have left the family to find work and never return and Father Jack has died.