“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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Kleenex please.
This and it’s sequel were the most tragic books I ever read. Well written, but would never read again.
This is a wonderful, tragic book. A very sad, yet inspirational story.
One of my favorite books. It makes you laugh and cry at the same time.
the most depressing book I have ever read!
Well written memoir. You are drawn to the characters and all that is happening to them.
A tragic, but loving story about Ireland’s poor. Every informed reader must read this book.
Very depressing!
What a great story… Wonderfully written.
I felt that the author named this book as such to try to make himself seem like he understood the sacrifice his mother gave for him, but it felt like a self-centered memoir.
This book is difficult, due to subject matter ie. poverty, abandonment, desperation. Yet, inspirational in the character’s determination, and never failing hope in the future.
Depressing!
I never knew what life could be like back then, so sad yet so strong.
The author wrote a wrenching yet funny memoir of his youth. It’s an irresistable, readable story of growing up with a penniless drunk for a father.
Real characters who stand up, look you in the eye, and talk. This is a vibrant case illustration for why we are responsible for making sure that children are cared for and have a reasonable chance at life. And why we are responsible for accepting immigrants and giving them a chance. It’s a good picture of a world without a government which …
McCourt made me feel Ireland in the midst of devastation. I was reading in bed and started to have empathetic itching from bed bugs. It was a part of world history I was not acquainted with to this degree. It is well written and gives a vivid portrayal of life I would not otherwise have an insight into.
Unforgettable story – and what a writer!
One of my favourite books in life !
Read long ago.
A truly tragic upbringing to have actually lived thru. I felt for the author.