“When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.” So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish … Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank’s mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank’s father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy — exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling– does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father’s tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies. Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank’s survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig’s head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors–yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness. Angela’s Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt’s astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.
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Very interesting yet sad and very hard to believe that this went on in the world.
I enjoyed every page.
McCourt did a wonderful job of describing his sordid life that began in Ireland where he was abused by Catholic priests and lived in squalor. The family was mired in poverty of the most abject kind, lived under dreadful conditions of sanitation and discomfort. Even so, the family formed tight bonds with one another and went on to make successes …
I love Frank McCourt’s books! A must read if you are Irish or just interested in Ireland.
“The happy childhood is hardly worth your while.” Well McCourt would know. It’s still a beautiful book about ugly things. And nothing is ugly all the time, not if you really look.
I was hooked from the first paragraph..got a review copy very early and called publicist immediately and had Mr. McCourt on a tv program on as soon as possible…perhaps his first.
Brilliant, and will stay with me forever.
I can barely remember the book, other than I read it and remember liking it at the time.
This is one of the best books I have ever read. I know he wrote one more book…..sad that he didn’t live to write more. Excellent writer with fascinating stories about growing up poor.
Subject matter is riveting. You feel for the writer’s anguish and his descriptions of live in Ireland as a young man are haunting. Frank McCourt was a master story teller and he should be read for his writing as much as for the intimate knowledge he has of Ireland of old.
This is a poignant story of survival against all odds, told with warmth and humor. You will laugh. You will cry.
It was hard for me to really get into in the beginning but then it picked up. I truly amazing book.
It really held my interest for sure. Such a hard life and so well presented. It was unflinching in depicting the hardship of the time and his particular self nd family.
Amazing author. Loved the honest thrust of the book throughout. Good writer for an engrossing read all the way.
i read an excerpt of this book in the New Yorker. When I saw the entire book i had to have it. Frank McCourt presented his autobiography in gripping language that is so crisp and clear that i could visualize every scene. A brilliant author and story teller who is sorely missed
Unbelievably sad, beautifully written….
What an amazing life he had. Read the follow-up, too, but this is far better. Lays his background out so well the reader can see how and why he goes from here to there. A fascinating, unbelievable tale of the power of the human spirit.
Such an intense, haunting book. It will stay with you and make you cry and hurt. A must read (once).
A modern classic
Great biography
Having lived in Limerick, there are aspects of this tale that just aren’t possible. Friends there who were living there at the same time as McCourt call it fiction, and I tend to believe them first. He tells quite a tale though!
Superb writing
Inspirational tale of survival and overcoming